


To Pull A Nanase

by isuilde, teletou



Category: Free!
Genre: Crack, F/M, Failed attempt at humor, background makorin, background seigou, rom-commed by your friends, this is a trainwreck
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-06
Updated: 2015-12-06
Packaged: 2018-05-05 07:07:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 28,434
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5365931
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/isuilde/pseuds/isuilde, https://archiveofourown.org/users/teletou/pseuds/teletou
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Nanase Haruka falls in love with the girl across his windows and begins to pine, his friends launch "Project Humanize Nanase Haruka". Mostly because they're all well-meaning assholes.</p><p>It works. Kind of. Maybe.</p><p>It's a good thing Yazaki Aki just finds everything hilarious.</p>
            </blockquote>





	To Pull A Nanase

**Author's Note:**

  * For [proshy](https://archiveofourown.org/users/proshy/gifts).



> We barely made it!!! *insert prayer emojis here*
> 
> Anyway, so uh, we ended up going with this AU when a wild dorm!High School!AU idea appeared. And it, uh, predictably, blows up. We really apologize for the sheer monstrous size of this fic when it's literally just.. crack. And nothing else of substance. Dear our lovely Giftee, we hope you'd enjoy this, you wonderful person you. 
> 
> isuilde: We had to rush up a bit because teletou is leaving for Japan, but we made it! The... idea was completely my fault, but teletou keeps coming up with things that made it even better and..yeah. I only wrote the boring parts ww. BUT HAPPY HARUAKI PARTY, PLEASE ENJOY OUR SHITTY SENSE OF HUMOR???
> 
> teletou: Happy Haruakis, Pokapoki!! I'm sorry this blew up? We didnt plan for it to be like this, honest! But at this point, what do you expect from an IsuHal fic ww. I cant say much about this fic but Isu brought up the idea and all a sudden this monstrosity was brought to this world. It really does ride on her sense of humour because I have none. I hope you enjoy and get a few chucks out of it!

Haruka's first love starts with a small cardboard box cradled in his hands, the white curtains of his balcony window fluttering inwards. He follows the scatter of petals on his floor, takes a moment to set his things on the desk in the corner — photo albums, a pencil roll filled with ink pens and brushes, half-finished kitten dolls for Makoto — and steps outside. Curtains pushed aside, light filters into the dark room. Behind winding branches, cherry blossoms in full bloom, the window on the building across his.

" _Haru?_ " He thinks he might have heard Makoto, faraway, muffled, somewhere from down the hall. He doesn't turn around, barely even moves.

A strong gust of wind blows, dark brown strands fanning over mint-green curtains. The girl from across the building holds a hand behind her ear, tucking hair back from falling to her face.

"Haru, are you here? My room's three doors down from yours this year—"

Makoto finds him, moments later, after the girl finished hooking her curtains, cheeks warm, fists heavily creasing the flaps of his cardboard box. He still doesn't turn towards Makoto, doesn't even consider looking up from Baron Mittens von Meowsworth's beady eyes, because  _what was that...?_ His lips are dry, just a little. His heart feels like it's going to burst, beating as much as it would after a long distance sprint.

"Haru? Are you okay?"

Haruka releases a ragged sigh in attempt to calm himself down, and then, almost pleasantly, reaches into the box to grab a random kitty plush, finding a soft cartoon mustache to squeeze the everloving fluff out of.

He hears Makoto squeak, an instantaneous reaction, almost like  _he's_  the one that Haruka is currently strangling.

"Is that Baron Meowsworth? Haru, his stuffing is coming out of his ears?  _Haru?!"_

**——————-**

He sees her smile, for the first time, the day after. His hands against glass panes, finger prints marring the surface with a gentle push― and their eyes meet, when the window swings open, a fraction of a second before Haru ducks down, hoping that he could play it off as a small nod in greeting. He braves a peek, his gaze a staccato between socked feet, the railing, then a glimpse of a smile from behind his fringe.

The girl offers him a cheerful wave, cheeks red from the early morning chill. Haruka notices the sides of her hair are curled, a small partition in waves. She yawns, a hand brought up to cover her mouth, head tilted slightly backwards, bedhair bouncing.

He doesn't know how long he has been staring, remembers one last smile and a nod before she draws her curtains closed. He blinks, watches a lone pink petal float into the girl's room. In between flaps of mint-green fabric, he follows its trail as it settles down on top of her head.

A faint reflection on the wooden floor — Haruka could barely even see his face, vague shapes and colours of his eyes and hair tinted caramel, much less the smile he gives to the toe end of his socks.

**——————-**

Makoto first notices something is wrong when he passes Haruka on their morning run. His friend had slowed to a stop, dazed as he looks to his side, to the girls' dorm building with a faraway look in his eyes. He jogs backwards, stops to stand next to Haruka, and tries to follow his line of sight. Mint-green curtains, a star-shaped patch sown onto the bottom corner. Not much to go on. Nothing that could point Makoto to the direction of why Haruka is acting so odd.

"Haru?"

Haruka shakes his head, scrunches his face for a few seconds before schooling it back to his usual cool, impassive expression. "It's nothing."

"If you say so then..." It isn't, really. At current, Makoto doesn't know that it is, but he knows enough that it's  _something._ He stays still, looks between the open window and Haruka's back as he jogs ahead, starts to notice a dusting of red peeking from under his black cap.

He wonders...

**——————-**

"Yo, Haru," Rin says as he waltzes Haruka's room. "You've been holed up here for like the whole weekend. Get some sun, will you?" He pauses, hovers over Haruka's shoulder to see him holding an embroidery hoop, half-finished shooting star sown on white cotton fabric.

"Oh, that's cute. My birthday already passed though. Is this an apology for that frankensteinian Iwasame patch you gave me?"

A thread drawn taut, a glint from Haruka's desk lamp runs down the needle between his thumb and forefinger. He says nothing. Unmoving. Rin's breath hitches.

"Whoa." Haruka pulls tighter, a trill cutting through the the air, and Rin stumbles a step back, eyes the back of Haruka's head warily. "You're in a mood today."

He takes a moment to be thankful for the little gifts from the world, because if Haruka had turned to look at him, glared lasers from his fire-hot blue eyes, perhaps he would have left the door a haphazard pile of human ashes.

**——————-**

Sousuke thinks he may have disgust, disbelief, and utter contempt rolled together in the wrinkles of his scrunched nose. He catches the tail end of brown hair, strands wisping away as a girl from across the building ducks behind her curtains. Nanase freezes in mid-turn, might as well think Sousuke is a fucking ghost, with the way his eyes are comically wide. 

"Good god." When Rin sent him out to fetch Nanase, Sousuke really,  _really_  did not plan on making the discovery of the century. He leans on Nanase's door frame for support, massages his temples as his world and all his beliefs shatter down into tiny pieces, phases away from existence in tandem with a long, heavy sigh. "Nanase has  _actual human emotions_."

**——————-**

Sometimes, Makoto comes to visit Haruka's room to see him staring out the window. On the floor, hanging upside down from the foot of his bed, or teetering dangerously as he pushes out from his desk, balancing on the back legs of his chair. He leaves his sketchbook open, which he hardly ever does. A gust of cherry blossom petals in watercolour, galaxies and stardust, sharp, pencil sketches of a gentle breeze weaved between strands of hair. He traces the soft bumps on the textured paper, listens to Haruka sigh wistfully, motionless on his bed, most likely still in the position Makoto had left him five minutes ago to sit at his desk — staring into the dark abyss of his ceiling.

Makoto briefly wonders about the existence of spring sickness, and if Haruka had caught it. He knows that summer sickness is a thing, but this is the first time he came across spring warmth-induced lethargy.

Maybe he's due a visit to Rei's room. Ask him an absolutely legitimate scientific query of pollens and the possibility of them clogging Haruka's motoric systems.

**——————-**

_Tiny braids._ The girl from the window wears her hair in  _tiny braids._ He caught sight of her, behind curtains in the gentle wind one morning, as she's about to leave. The little woven parts of her hair bounces with every step, as she's reaching for her bag in a rush, almost as if they move with her emotions.

Haruka is just as good as fucked.

_If that isn't the darn cutest thing he's ever seen..._

**——————-**

Sousuke, with his eyes closed, takes a long, serene sip of coffee from his mug. He had gathered Rin and Tachibana in his room tonight, seated them around the low table in hopes for a long, meaningful discussion. Nanase would have been sent for quarantine in his room with Hazuki and Ryuugazaki stationed as distractions — perhaps have Nagisa whine for a penguin amigurumi and Rei ask for aesthetic yarn colour combinations, but the fucker willingly stays in his room without prompting anyway, so he would like to think that they're not in any danger of him walking into this  _very important_  meeting. He sets his mug down — loudly — hopes to convey an atmosphere of utmost seriousness.

Tachibana flinches at the noise, blinks. Rin yawns, looks at Sousuke blearily.

"It has come to my intentions." A managerial interlace of his fingers. "That Nanase may not be an unfeeling android."

His (presently attending) friends exchange glances, and in the span of their four seconds of eye contact, seems to have come to the conclusion that maybe, just maybe, Sousuke bumped his head in the shower this morning.

"He never has been one?" Tachibana asks with a tilt of his head.

"Your opinion doesn't count."

"Don't bully." Rin says, suddenly very much awake now that he has to defend his boyfriend's integrity. "Haruka feels as much complex and non-complex emotions as you and me."

Sousuke stares Rin down, raises a skeptical eyebrow. Rin holds his stance for a commendable quarter of a minute before he crumbles, looks at Tachibana dejectedly. "Yeah, sorry, Makoto. He's a cyborg,  _at least._ I don't think they've programmed all of his emotions in yet."

"I can't believe you!" Tachibana pouts, folds his arms in front of his chest and looks at Rin with gradually increasing disappointment before his brows shoot up, eyes wide with curiosity. "There's a difference between a cyborg and an android?"

"Of course there is! Cyborgs are part human — my argument against Sousuke, by the way. Haru isn't  _completely_ not human—"

Sousuke clears his throat, staged, business-like, into a balled fist. "We're going on a tangent."

"Oh," Tachibana and Rin says in sync. "Sorry."

"Back to more pressing matters." He folds his hands neatly over the table this time. "Nanase may have just unlocked a new emotion."

"Ah," Rin snickers. "Nice choice of words. Like he finally achieved enough life EXP and levelled up."

"Exactly. You're finally getting this. I'm proud." Sousuke pointedly ignores the absolutely betrayed look on Tachibana's face. He leans forward, lowers his voice into a whisper when the other two follows. "In any case, I might know why."

"Are you sure, Yamazaki-kun? You aren't the most, er, skilled...? When it comes to reading Haru— Oh." Tachibana brings curled fingers to his lips, bites the first knuckle of his forefinger in thought. "Now that you mention it, he has been acting odd..."

Jackpot. If Tachibana had noticed something, then there's a huge chance that Sousuke isn't pulling shit out of his ass. Now all they need to do is make sure their stories overlapped. "If you could elaborate?"

"He's been staring out his window a lot? I thought it was just him daydreaming as usual... but there's this one window from the girl's dorm—"

"There it is!" Sousuke shouts, slamming the table.

It's nice knowing that he wasn't hallucinating last night in Nanase's room.

"Eh? Come again?" And to no one's surprise, Rin is slow.

"The room right across his, it has a star patch on the curtain—"

"OH!" Rin claps his hands, finally boots his brain enough to catch up with the rest of them. "He was making a patch when I last went to his room. Shit looked like a star stuck to the end of the Reading Rainbow logo."

Sousuke nods solemnly as he pieces both stories, the neurons in his brain connecting the very obvious progression of dots that confirms his initial hypothesis. One last resolute nod, he hums approvingly, then stares dead into Tachibana and Rin's eyes.

"Nanase is in love."

Silence, for a moment, an eternity. None of them breathes. Their surroundings tense. Sousuke is glad that both of his friends realise how earth-shattering this is.

"So." Rin offers, conspirational, leaning further in. "What are we going to do about it?" 

Bless Rin and Makoto's birth.

**——————-**

Sousuke wakes up next morning, just as the sun rises, to the sight of Makoto and Rin sprawled on his floor, cuddling in a nest of scrap paper with matching couple's dark circles under their eyes. In his sleepy haze, he has half a mind to kick them awake, tell them to take that shit to their own rooms, but refrains.

Rin is holding a piece of paper above their heads, a crumpled outline of their finalised game plan messily scribbled across the leaflet. He smiles, satisfied with their hard work last night. It's going to be amazing and fool-proof — a no-fail guarantee to make love bloom across balconies.

For once his life, Sousuke is doing something in Nanase's best interest.

He better fucking appreciate all the effort they put into this. 

**——————-**

When Haruka goes down to the common room to meet up with his friends for their daily morning run, he sees them crowding on something on the corner of the room.

"What are you—" he pauses, because everyone abruptly tenses and there's a flurry of hurried motions happening in between his friends' hands, clatters of things hitting the floor and rolling under the couches— _are those markers_? "What is that?"

"Nothing!" Rin says, suspiciously too brightly, and Haruka narrows his eyes. "Makoto and I have a project.  _A lovers project_." At that, Yamazaki snorts out loud, and Rin digs his elbows deep into his best friend's side even as his face goes aflame. "Shut the fuck up, Sousuke."

Makoto chuckles, a similar shade of red spreading across his cheeks and up to the tips of his ears. "Rin is just helping me draw a family tree for the twins, Haru. See," he reaches behind Rin's back and tugs out an A3 sketchbook. "Just a sketchbook. They—want Rin in the family tree as well."

Haruka blinks. Once, twice, and decides to not pursue the wondering thought of how much of what Makoto just said was a lie, in favor of turning to Rin to say, "I thought you were still looking for the right ring."

"What," Makoto says, eyes wide in disbelief as his voice catches in his throat, and Rin hisses angrily like a cat at Haruka, his face going impossibly redder by the second. Yamazaki, because this is the only thing Haruka knows he can definitely count on him for, adds, "Nah, he hasn't even managed to find Makoto's ring finger size yet."

Haruka hides a smirk behind his hand as he turns around, leaving behind Rin's indignant shriek and Makoto's high-pitched yelp. If he doesn't hurry, he wouldn't be able to catch the girl opening her window, after all.

**——————-**

So here is how they go through the all-girls school dorm every morning: there is a two-meters brick wall right outside of the boys' dorm, so they have to go round the dorm complex and out the main gate of the school in order to get to the main road. Then afterwards, it's a jog along the perimeter of the park that half-borders the girls and the boys' dorms—because technically, the girls' dorm is located inside the park itself, the closest point between its brick wall and the boys' dorm's own brick wall a mere hundred meters.

To finish their morning run, they always enter the park and cut a straight line across towards the other entrance closer to their school, which also means passing by the point between the girls and the boys' dorms, and also happens to mean Haruka's only chance in getting a glimpse of his (or so Rin would say with a smirk) first love.

It isn't different today, either. Like a daily routine, without fail, by the time Haruka could see the rows of windows at the girls' dorm facing the park (and consequently, the boys' dorm as well), that particular window is slowly being pushed open, long arm reaching out to hold the hinges, and between billowing white curtains, the familiar strands of brown hair.

He enjoys the slight flutter in his chest at the sight—eyes never leaving the slender figure propping out of the windowsill, feeling his legs getting lighter as he comes even closer. These precious seconds are the only time he gets to see her in the morning—this girl whose name he doesn't know, whose tiny braid bounces on the curve of her cheek, whose eyes as bright as her smile as she welcomes morning into her room.

And as always—as always, when he's near enough that she'd notice him passing by, she'd look down and smile. And Haruka would nod politely, trying to keep a straight face and pretending like he hadn't been staring from half a hundred meters away, not pausing as he jogs off.

Except today, the girl looks down, and Haruka catches her smile freeze for a moment, before she bursts out into laughter.

While clearly looking at him.

Something seizes in his chest, and Haruka nearly forgets to breathe for a moment. No, he thinks, mind whirling, and his legs stutters into a frozen stop, face shutting down into a complete blank as he tries to process the non-routine thing that had just happened: she laughed. She laughed. At him. Does he have something on his face, does he look like he'd just gotten swept up in a tornado and his hair is all sticking up, oh god,  _does he remember to put on pants this morning—_

"I didn't expect that reaction," Rin's voice comes from behind.

Haru, ever-so-slowly, almost dreadfully, turns around.

The sketchbook is open, held between Makoto and Yamazaki's outstretched arm, the tall bastards, and on the supposedly blank page is the three characters of Haruka's name, written in blocky strokes of blue decorated with crude doodles of fish, and underneath them is  a sharp arrow drawn in red, pointing straight at Haruka.

His friends are grinning at him with such an accomplished face, and the girl—the beautiful girl with the tiny braid, who always smiles so sweetly at him in the morning, hasn't stopped laughing. At him.

Wordlessly, Haruka turns around, forces his legs to move and jogs away, and thinks of mackerels to keep his face blank.

**——————-**

"Haru, don't be so mad, we're only trying to help."

"........."

"Yeah, Haru, you won't get anywhere if you don't man up and start trying to talk to her. Are you seriously going to ignore us forever? Really?"

"Didn't peg you for a coward, Nanase."

"Haruuu! Please put down the table lamp!"

**——————-**

Okay, so maybe Rin's idea, no matter how stupid they sound, might actually work.

That, or miracles do happen, and Nanase Haruka is god's favorite child.

Because when he passes the girl's window opening the next day, intent to not look up and embarrass himself even further, it's Makoto's delighted gasp and Rin's quiet "fuck yeah!" that draws his eyes off the paved road, upwards to where the girl is leaning out of the window, a sketchbook held open in her arms, her smile brighter than the morning sun.

 _Yazaki Aki_ , the characters on the paper said. Then, in smaller characters, ended with a smiley face, is a simple,  _Nice to meet you!_

"Yazaki Aki," he breathes, almost inaudible, trying out the new syllables on his tongue and wondering if this is what happiness tastes like.

She gives a tiny wave with her free hand, then props her chin on the windowsill, her gaze fond as it holds his own, and Haruka distantly hears Rin hissing at him urgently, "Haru, what the fuck are you doing, answer her!"

He opens his mouth. Closes it. Opens it again. Then raises one hand, and gives a tiny wave of his own.

Behind him, Rin's groan mingles with Makoto's amused chuckle and Yamazaki's short tongue-clicking, but none of it matters. Not when Yazaki Aki's smile widens until the corners of her eyes crinkle, and Haruka's world narrows down into the smile, the tiny braid, the warm eyes.

**——————-**

The first thing Haruka writes on the sketchpad by himself is:  _I'm sorry about my friends_.

"Rude," Rin drawls, when Haruka holds it up for Yazaki to read, but doesn't say anything about how Haruka's jogging pace has slowed down to a pace of a snail. He takes in the shade of pale red dusting Haruka's cheeks, though, even if the dark-haired boy refuses to look at the rest of his friends, and grins. "Fine, Haru, if you're going to be that way. See if we'd help you in your romantic quest ever again."

"You butted in," Haruka says blandly, voice monotone despite the shade of red slowly crawling to the tips of his ears. Rin has to admit how impressive Haruka is, to be able to manage a blank face even when he is positively blushing at the sight of Yazaki poking her head out of the window, hair tousled by the morning breeze, smiling and lightly waving as they pass her window, holding her own sketchbook with filled with neat characters of:  _Good morning, you're all energetic today, too!_

"You are so frustrating," Rin grouses, enjoys the amused laugh he draws from Makoto, running steadily by his side. And because Haruka has decided that he will go at a snail pace, it's inevitable that the rest of them would outrun him in a moment, so he says, "See you at the dorm later then."

And it's funny, the way Haruka snaps his head towards them almost instantly, eyes wide and panicked like he's being left somewhere in the middle of desert with no water (or he's being left to watch Iwasame-chan being slaughtered). Rin blinks, twice, thrice, too thrown aback to make sense of the desperate look, until Makoto chuckles and says, "You can do it, Haru! Good luck!"

"Of all things," Sousuke shakes his head, jogging on ahead without looking back, the corners of his lips twisting upwards, and Rin barks a laugh, flashing Haruka a thumb-up before catching up with Sousuke and Makoto ahead.

The last thing he sees when he glances back is Haruka at a complete stop, staring at them with his mouth slightly opened, and Yazaki's sketchbook opening on a new page with an innocent-looking question mark drawn there.

**——————-**

It's  _how are you_  and  _you're earlier today!_  and  _I know your name, what about the others'?_  and  _Rin, Makoto (taller), Yamazaki (tallest)_  one day, and  _I have kanji quiz today_  and  _good luck!_  and  _Thank you_  the next day, and then  _Is it true that the boys' dorm cafeteria sells unlimited Iwasame bun?_  and  _Yes, but only on Wednesdays_  and  _Do you like them?_  on the day after.

But always, always a  _Hello_  and  _Good morning_  and  _Have a nice day_ , so Aki never tears those words off her sketchbook. She does, however, adds small doodles on them time and again, some in bright-coloured crayons when she feels particularly cheerful, some in sky-blue markers when she feels slightly less so. By the time three weeks have passed since they had started the sketchbook communication thing in the morning, Aki has had those three pages fully coloured, and she is looking thoughtfully at them when Gou knocks on he door and says, "Senpai, I've got some Iwasame buns!"

The only thing she envies from Gou for having a boyfriend at the all-boys school Iwasame next door is the fact that she could get him to get her Iwasame buns any time she wants. Not that it matters much, when Gou always shares with her.

"Wow, they're so pretty and colourful," Gou comments, when she puts three packages of Iwasame buns on her table, consequently taking a look on the  _Have a nice day_  page Aki still has open. "I like the blue shades you do here, Senpai."

"Thanks," Aki grins, letting Gou flip the sketchbook page open to reveal the  _Good morning_  page. "It's just a thing I do when I get bored, so it doesn't mean much."

"You're not planning to leave our swimming club to the art club, are you?" Gou directs a wounded look at her, one that makes Aki's fingers itch to ruffle her hair. She does so, and Gou avoids her hand with a laugh. "Ah, but honest, Senpai, this is really good."

"You think so?" Aki smiles, propping her chin on one hand as she peers at Gou. "Thank you. This isn't an attempt to bribe me to listen to your life problems, is it?"

"I would never," Gou pouts, putting the sketchbook down and throws herself onto Aki's bed, making herself comfortable. "But now that you brought it up, Senpai, you won't believe what Sei did today—"

"Yes, yes," Aki chuckles, and settles down on her chair as Gou launches into another embarrassing incident her boyfriend has apparently gotten himself to.

**——————-**

Honestly, Makoto thinks it's cute.

It's also nice to see Haruka showing up for their daily morning run in the morning with a fraction of a more excited look in his eyes and a sketchbook in his hand—he thinks if Haruka had a tail it probably would have been wagging, even if his face looks as bland as ever. He's pretty much the only one Haruka would allow to flip the sketchbook and read the so-called morning messages, most likely because Haruka is too embarrassed to show either Rin or Sousuke, but it's alright. Makoto knows that at this point, Haruka kind of expects him to report it to Rin (and later, Rin to Sousuke) anyway.

Except, well—

"This is frustrating," Rin announces one day, when they are all sitting in Haruka's room—or in Sousuke's case, sprawled on the floor reading the newest weekly JUMP with no care in the world. It's pouring rain outside since early in the morning, which automatically cancelled their morning run routines (yes, they do it even on weekends), and Haruka has been sitting on his desk, alternately drawing and glancing at the general direction of the all-girls' school dorm.

"What is?" Sousuke lifts his head minutely, glances at where Rin sits next to Makoto, and makes a face. Probably because Makoto is playing with Rin's fingers, so Makoto snatches his hands away, feeling self-conscious instantly as heat crawls up his face. Except Rin hooks their fingers together, and Makoto sees Sousuke roll his eyes. Okay then. 

Rin gestures vaguely at Haruka with his shoulder. "Dysfunctional Haru is no fun."

"Rin, don't be mean." Makoto hums lightly, the reaction more of a habit than an actual scolding.

"He can't see the girl for a day, and he's already a lovesick puppy brooding on his chair drawing, Makoto. This is just going to get worse."

"Her name is Yazaki," Haruka mumbles.

Rin shoots him a pointed look. "We know, Haru, we were the ones helping you to actually  _get_  her name, remember?"

Haruka's answer is a sour look and not a word spoken, before he turns back to his drawing. Four seconds later he lifts up his head and glances out again, to the still closed window of the dorm across, and the seemingly empty room behind it. Makoto feels like he ought to tell Haruka not to cross the line and become a stalker, but it's a bit hard to say that when Yazaki's room is right across Haruka's own.

"You're not progressing at all, Haru," Rin says, apparently isn't giving up on lecturing Haruka despite the occassional sour looks thrown his way. "You can't just stick to—to sketchbooks and glancing at her room all day. Also, it's a bit creepy."

Okay, so maybe Makoto doesn't have to bring that point up. Haruka is obviously aware of it too, because the sour look turns into something very close to a pout, and Makoto reads  _like I have any other choice_  in the downward curve of Haruka's lips.

"I guess it's not like Haru could just come over to an all-girls school and call Yazaki-san out," Makoto says, by way of relaying Haruka's thoughts to the others. "It makes it harder for Haru to actually talk to Yazaki-san, right? We're not supposed to linger outside of the girls' school either, there's punishment for that. Even the sketchbook—if we got caught we might be punished for that."

"Makes you wonder why they built our dorms so close to one another," Sousuke mutters, voice drowned by the rustle of pages being flipped, but his next words are louder. "Guess we can't really send letters either?"

Rin jolts forward, leaping to his feet, pulling Makoto up by proxy. "No, wait, that's it! Sousuke, you're brilliant!!"

"What," Sousuke blinks up, obviously confused. Haruka, on the other hand, is already directing suspicious looks at Rin. "I am?"

"Letters!" Rin exclaims. "It's a great idea, isn't it? Haru, go write your letters now, I'm gonna see if Sousuke and I can't sneak out a bow out of the archery club!"

"What," this time, the word comes from all three boys left in the room, but Rin only lets go of Makoto's hand to put his own hands on his hips and cock it confidently, his Matsuoka-patented grin stretching wide on his face.

"I'm gonna be your cupid!"

**——————-**

Haruka isn't insane. Of course he shoots the idea down. What kind of friend would he be if he lets Rin and Sousuke get in trouble for literally aiming weapons towards an all-girls' school dorm?

Also, Yazaki would think he has weird friends, and thus Haruka is also a weirdo.

Except one day Makoto goes to spend the weekend at home and when he returns back to the dorm, his backpack bulges with a wooden toy bow and four arrows with suction cups on their tips, his smile brighter than the sun and his eyes more excited than a kid on Christmas morning when he presents the toy to the rest of their friends proudly.

Rin lets out a loud whoop and kisses Makoto hard.

**——————-**

Haruka ends up writing a letter because Rin says, "If you're not gonna write it I will make Sousuke write one for you," and Yamazaki, in turn, lets out a deep chuckle that Haruka associates with pure evil. So he writes one, because god knows what Yamazaki would have written if he were given the chance.

It's short—not even half a page long, but he makes it up by sketching a lot of sleeping cats curling on top of another on the rest of the page. He begins with  _I think talking through sketchbooks are hard, so I wrote a letter, I hope you don't mind,_  and continues with a story of Nagisa and Rin helping Makoto hoard a bunch of stray cats last week before the dorm lady found out and made him throw all of them out. He writes  _It's almost time for midterm exams, I'm a bit nervous about English_  and leaves it there, adding  _Good luck with your midterm exams_ , as an afterthought to end the letter, not knowing what else to write or what is acceptable to write.

Rin excitedly ties the letter onto one of the arrows when they head out for their morning run the next day. Haruka sees the bright blue and pastel-coloured  _Good morning!_  page of Yazaki's sketchbook propped against her windowsill, sees Yazaki leaning by its side, her focus on the movements of her fingers twining strands of her bangs into a tiny braid, a steaming cup sitting on the edge of the table just off to the side.

"I'll show you a sight you've never seen before, Haru," Rin grins cockily, aims for the side of the window, and lets the arrow fly.

He misses, of course. The arrow knocks down the sketchbook instead, drawing a surprised yelp from Yazaki, and Haruka's heart stutters in his chest because  _that was the cutest yelp he's ever heard in his life, god help him_.

"Oops," Rin says, completely unrepentant, and jogs past Haruka to catch up with Yamazaki and Makoto. "Right. Do your best, Haru."

Haruka would have shoot him a glare, but he doesn't have the time for that because Yazaki is poking her head out of the window, the arrow and the letter in her hands, her confused face brightening when her gaze finds him. Haruka places a hand in front of his face, making an apologizing gesture, and she scrambles for her sketchbook, flipping it onto a new page and starts writing.

He's almost past her window when she props the sketchbook up: a sketch of chibi Yazaki throwing her hands up happily under the big characters of  _Thank you!_ , and, in much smaller letters underneath the sketch, cramped together on the corner:  _I'll reply to you as soon as I can!_

Haruka tries not to smile. He fails, but he thinks he manages to at least not make it look dopey as he nods his goodbye to her.

**——————-**

In the evening, Makoto walks into Haruka's room and hands him a white envelope that smells like oranges, his smile happy as he says, "Good for you, Haru-chan!"

"Knock off the  _'chan'_ ," Haruka mumbles, but Makoto just laughs and doesn't mention the way Haruka's hand tremble ever-so-slightly as he accepts the letter—he never checks his mailbox, so Makoto's always been the one who does it for him, but he thinks he might just start checking it daily from now on.

Rin coos at him from the door before he walks into the room, and Yamazaki makes a sound like a snort, but Haruka couldn't care less. Very carefully, he opens the letter and reads, marvels at how adorable and different Yazaki's handwritten characters are—much rounder, less sharp on the edges, squares that almost look like circles. He might have spent five minutes blank-staring at the kanji of his family name on the first line, dumbly thinking  _she wrote my name she wrote my name she wrote my name_  until Yamazaki accidentally hit him on the head with a paper ball he was throwing at Rin.

Haruka can't even find it in him to glare at Yamazaki.

Yazaki writes about her day at school—he learns that she's in the swimming club as well, and that she's been spending a lot of her time training that she nearly forgot about the midterm exams coming, _thank you Nanase-kun for reminding me_ ! It's a full page long, and there's a tiny sketch of a bird on the bottom corner of the page, and a short explanation of how there's this bird who perches on the tree just outside of her window every morning, and  _if Nanase-kun ever sees it don't forget to say hi from me, okay?_

He slumps on the table for a few moments after he finished reading the letter, ignoring Rin's and Yamazaki's sharp teasing comments and Makoto's chuckles, staring across the park outside of his window, at where the windows are now closed and the curtains drawn.

Then a thought hits him, and he says, "I could have just mailed the letter."

Rin barks out the laugh. "Haru, come  _on_. Where's the fun in that?"

**——————-**

"Makoto, I borrowed the pantry," Haruka says as he lightly kicks open Makoto's door. Normally he would scoff at such acts befitting of his more uncivilised friends — Rin and Sousuke — but his hands are full, there isn't much of a choice. He really doesn't want to put two plates of perfectly good curry on the floor just to open the door. "Made you food."

"Mm." Distracted, non-committal. Makoto is up to something. Haruka squints from the distance, tries to figure out what his lump of a best friend is doing hunched over his desk with such single-minded determination.

His DS is on the bed.

Not an intense round of Animal Crossing, then.

"What are you doing?" Given recent events, he feels like he shouldn't ask. There's a part of him, somewhere inside, in the depths of the rational corners of his mind, that tells him that he doesn't want to know — but trusting Makoto is like second nature to him, and another, silly, naive, disconcertingly bigger part of him tells him that Makoto is above the shenanigans Rin and Sousuke comes up with. At least, he won't be the one to  _start_  the idea wheel. He's there for the ride and would probably tumble down along with them, but never the driver.

"Making paper cup phones."

Well,  _shit._

"Do I want to know why?" His hands are itching just to tilt down slightly, cheerfully sending Makoto's meal sliding down the plate and into the garbage bin next to the desk.

"Honestly, Haru-chan—  _ow, shit—"_ Makoto punctures himself with a sharp pencil trying to make a hole in the cup. He looks like he's about to cry a little. Haruka swallows an aborted laugh, counts to ten in his head as he weighs the possibility of karma coming back to bite his ass when taking schadenfreude in his current situation. His face gives out nothing, though. Or so he hopes. Makoto wouldn't notice either way, with how he isn't even looking at him. "You've always been slow. I wish you'd get up to speed already."

 _He hasn't,_  Haruka scrunches his nose. Seventeen years of experience points heavily towards _Makoto_ being the slow one in this friendship.

"I guess it can't be helped, huh?" He has the gall to smile up at him, like Haruka's _cute_ or something. A proud mother finding her child especially endearing. Dumb, but endearing nonetheless. Haruka's hands are starting to feel tired at this point, perhaps it's a sign from the universe if anything, for him to drop the plates onto the floor and embrace the inner five year old in him, yelling as he power walks across the hallway towards the dorm head's room that  _'Tachibana broke some pla~aates'._

Makoto tugs once on the string tied to one end, then twice on the other. Haruka is eighty-percent sure that it's mostly for show. He knows that it's secure — it'd take someone whose existence is a miracle to actually fuck up making paper cup phones. He smiles, one that makes Haruka look at him in equal parts contempt and resignation, and holds up both cups to either side of his face.

"We're going to hang these between your rooms!" he says, puffing out his chest. "Great idea, isn't it? You guys would be like that couple in that movie with the mochi-ya girl  _oh gosh_ —"

"It isn't even going to reach the wall," Haruka offers helpfully.

"Oh sweet,  _sweet,_ Haru-chan. One day, you will stop being a non-believer."

**——————-**

He makes a grand show of lifting his feet and positioning his hands level with his ears, elbow straight across his chest in a wind-up. Makoto has never played baseball outside of P.E class, but he thinks his form could give their school's baseball team a run for their money.

Rei would be proud of his beautiful, perfect form.

The paper cup leaves his grip, soars out the window in arc, between the windowsill and the sliding pane. It stays suspended in the air, floating, a millisecond of maximum terminal height—

_Makoto breathes, hopeful—_

—and goes straight down.

That, Rei probably wouldn't be very proud of. 

"Eep," Makoto squeaks.

The cup hits the ground with a dull, empty  _thunk_  that accurately represents Makoto's current state of being. 

It doesn't even hit the brick wall.

"You were saying?" 

He hears loud laughter, generously provided by Sousuke from five balconies on their right, Rin on accompaniment as he furiously slaps the floor in attempt to hide his overwhelming amusement.

**——————-**

"Fuck this shit," Sousuke says as he storms into Nanase's room.

"Fuck _your_ shit," Sousuke says as he takes the papercup away from Makoto. "Never try out for pitcher, Makoto. You're terrible."

"Don't bully!" Makoto wails, to which Sousuke ignores.

"This means nothing, Nanase," Sousuke says as he climbs out the window, hopes that he looks effortlessly cool, all lean back and long lazy limbs, because this is going to be the sight that defines his existence in Nanase's life.

"It's going to end up _nothing_ , I'm sure." Nanase won't be rolling his eyes after he paves the road towards his successful love story, but he says nothing. At least for now. The fucker would stop on his own volition after Sousuke has finished — what he's sure to be — breaking a few laws.

 _Eh, fuck em._ It's a minor sacrifice, if one at all. Public laws are negligible at best in the face of Nanase reaching True Humanity.

A full forward arc of his arms, in-step with a push of his toes against the railing. He jumps off the balcony, throwing the cup clear across the sky and through the winding branches of the tree outside the brick wall.

The wall isn't that high, he easily reaches the top with a leap, hooking his hands on the edge and pushing himself upwards and over.

He stumbles a little on his landing, but from where Nanase and Makoto are standing, they shouldn't be able to see that. Sousuke isn't really sure, but he isn't going to make like Ryuugazaki and calculate the possible angle of view, blind spots, optimal focus area, bla bla bla, something about height of vision, _bla bla bla._ If that little snort he had distantly heard  _was_  Nanase laughing at him, he could easily blame gravity. Bigger build, bigger force of gravity acting on him, masses and stuff.

Ryuugazaki is a terrible influence. Sousuke needs to stop hanging around Nanase's friends.

The string slides free from the branches easily enough when he pulls, a good few metres pooling by his before he sets off. A quick check around the tree — he doesn't  _think_ there are cops on patrol, but he could never be too sure. It's either them or some obaasans taking a walk around the neighbourhood at night. His position is easily visible from the park entrance. The area isn't very well lit, there are shadows here and there that he can hide in, and technically, there's a slim chance of him being spotted even without ducking towards the other side of the tree, he isn't willing to take any chances — obaasans have eyes like hawks. Sousuke has yet to understand the biological evolution of human females and how they apparently gain frightening super powers with age— or why they take walks at night, now that he thinks about it.

He  _could_  forgo the gymnastics. Just _walking_   _straight_  to the girls' dorm building is a legitimately viable option. It would be faster too, since it's a _flat plane of grass and cement pavings_ . But he  _could_  also _not give a fuck_ and tic-tac vault across some trees and somersault over park benches as much as he fucking wants to.

At least the little Ryuugazaki voice in his head is kind enough to give him pointers to calculate the exact angle and strength he needs to exert when throwing the cup, considering the distance from his current position to Yazaki's window and the height he has over it, sitting on a branch just slightly above the balcony. An easier option would have been to climb up her balcony and knock on her window saying, _'Hey, I climbed up two walls and, like, five trees to give you this because Nanase''s an awkward turtle. Please talk to him,'_ but Sousuke draws the line at trespassing into a girls' dormitory because that might actually get him expelled. So he settles with chucking paper cups at a girl's window from a tree right outside the brick wall by their building.

His throw lands the cup right over Yazaki's balcony, string twining twice around the railing after bouncing off her window pane with the perfect amount of force. Loud enough for her to check outside and hard enough for the collision to result in that impeccable placement.

Sousuke smirks as he backflips off the tree, mentally giving himself a pat on the back while he runs across the park and up the wall, leaping into Nanase's balcony right from the top.

"Those who believe shall be saved," he says, taking in immense joy and glory from Nanase's mouth hanging open.

**——————-**

In the end, the downfall of one Yamazaki Sousuke's hard work at being a brave warrior of love, were both forms of known evils.

The old lady who runs the  _dagashiya_ by the primary school downhill had seen _'a young man spider jump between trees like a particularly athletic chimpanzee'_ during her late night walk by the park and decided to snitch them to the local cops. Thankfully, they decided that it wasn't a big enough trouble to tell the school's authorities — bless them — and brushed it off as a case of youthful antics.

In turn though, the evidently less-than-pleased policeman who was sent to clean up after them, looks dead into Sousuke and Haruka's eyes through the window the next morning, a pointed glare before cutting the string connecting the two rooms with a huge pair of garden scissors.

"Shitty goddamn kids."

**——————-**

And then comes the day where Rei flips through Haruka's sketchbook and flippantly remarks, "I don't understand why you don't just ask for her cellphone number, Haruka-senpai."

Everyone in the room pauses. Haruka, who's in the middle of sketching a sky full of stars to go with his latest letter to Yazaki, literally freezes, face going dangerously blank, until Nagisa barrels forward into Rei's back, arms winding tight around Rei's neck as he exclaims, "Rei-chan, you're a genius as usual!"

Rin pulls out a folded up sheet of paper from his jeans pocket, eyebrows tauting as he scans the whole  _'Project Human Haru'_. "Why the fuck did we not think of that."

"It was past midnight," Makoto says, sounding defensive.

"Well, at least that means we don't have to try the paper cup phones again," Sousuke reaches out to grab the paper cup on Haruka's table, its cut string hanging sadly off the edge of the table. Haruka slaps his hand in one smooth motion. "Fuck you, Nanase."

"No touching." Haruka says.

"Who did you think set up the strings through the park?"

"Haru, that's not nice," Makoto chides, but when he leans forward to peek at what Haruka is writing, Haruka snatches the paper and holds it to his chest, eyes narrowing. Makoto gives him a hurtful look. "Haru—"

"Fine," Rin huffs, both hands coming up to pat Sousuke and Makoto's shoulders. "We'll let Haruka handle this one."

Haruka turns to him, not quite able to hide the bewildered look in his eyes. "I'm not asking for her number."

"Why not?" Nagisa chirps cheerfully, and Sousuke, because he is forever a five-year-old, answers without losing a beat, "Because Nanase's a chicken."

"Because that would seem too forward," Haruka says, voice louder, a sharp glare towards Sousuke, who just replies with a winning smirk. Rin snorts, and Haruka tries to ignore the inner-voice screaming at the back of his mind about  _watching her through windows and sending letters using toy bow!_  that sounds increasingly worrying. "I'm not asking for her number."

"Sure you're not," Rin says, and there's this certain tone in his voice that tells Haruka he's decided to do something, and Haruka should be very, very careful. "Rei, we're going to talk."

Rei blinks. "We are?"

"Rei, don't," Haruka says, pleads with his eyes, but Rei isn't Makoto and Rei cannot read his mind, obviously, because Rei obediently rises to his feet and follows Rin out of the room, Nagisa still hanging on his back. "Rei."

Rei turns and beams to him. "Don't worry, Haruka-senpai, I will try my best!"

Haruka resists the urge to bury his face in his palms.

**——————-**

Rei does not doubt that Haruka understands the basic fundamentals of aerial papercrafts and the physics there of. He was a playful albeit mischievous child, if the conclusion he had drawn from his friends's stories proved him correct. Surely, Haruka had attempted once or twice to fold the perfect paper aeroplane that could safely travel the distance between his room and Makoto's room across the street.

Haruka is also exceptionally smart, even if — Rei would like to apologise — he rarely gives off the impression of such.

It's just that Haruka is incredibly _odd_ that it deviates people's attentions to his eccentricities rather than his intellect. Rei does not respect him any less for that, however. Haruka is Haruka and Rei will always look up to his upstanding figure of an upperclassman and will always support any aspect of his life, love or studies or aspirations, if need be. He will do anything in his power if it in any way helps Haruka because, in Nagisa's preferred choice of less sophisticated language, _he loves him lots._

Nonetheless, given what he has deduced thus so far, Rei is absolutely, incredibly, nine-nine-point-nine-nine percent sure that Haruka would have an estimated thirty-five-point-seven-seven chance of being interested enough to listen to the fruits of his research last night.

If not, then, well, Nagisa would at least appreciate his efforts. Best case scenario, Rin would be aptly absorbing the flow of information and implementing those theories for future use.

Worst would be Rin laughing at him until the day he is but a handful of ashes inside an urn or under the Ryuugazaki family grave. Perhaps even beyond that. He would not put it past Rin to follow him to the next world when his time comes only laugh at him about a minor incident during high school.

That would be unlikely, of course. Impossible even, if he's allowed to be blunt. This plan is perfect and meticulously crafted, an ultimate amalgamation of logic and theory. It's going to be the synthesized Ultimate Weapon that will lead to game breaking levels of overpowered. 

"In eighteen-eighty-three Professor Osborne Reynolds carried out a series of experiments to determine the effects of viscous forces in a fluid in relation to momentum forces," Rei says as he opens the door to the stairway that leads towards the dorm roof.

"This experiment formulated the Reynolds Number, which will help us establish the factors needed for the perfect paper aeroplane in consideration of height, distance, and air conditions." Two steps up the rungs, Rei leading the party with Nagisa, Haru, and Rin trailing behind him.

"What I have found from this, is the Reynold Number of regular aeroplanes, which poses little help to us." He thinks he hears Nagisa starting to hop up the stairs to keep himself entertained. Not listening, then. "Naturally paper-based aircraft have a Reynold Number much less than life-sized ones, and this means viscosity is much more dominant, resulting in more drag, and more difficulty in creating lift."

"However!" In the midst of Rin and Haruka's synchronised fake snoring, Rei brandishes a paper aeroplane out of his blazer pocket and poses at the top of the stairs where sunshine streaming from the window hits him perfectly in a strategical backlight. He will take Nagisa's excited clapping with great pride, thank you very much. "From the information I have gathered, I have found out that thin paper is highly indispensable!"

"You're amazing, Rei-chan!" Haruka and Rin presently seems to think otherwise, but that will change soon enough.

Rei throws open the door that leads to the roof, struts across the open space to the railing and pushes his glasses up the bridge of his nose. What Haruka and everyone else present will see, is going to be a momentous moment that will go down in history.

"According to my calculations, the optimal paper thickness is about three to five percent of its chord length. As you can see," Rei holds up the paper aeroplane to his face, eyes the surface critically as he runs his free hand across its wings, "I have folded everything nice and flat to allow maximum lift as it allows the air to go around the paper's airfoil easily!"

The reaction he receives is a snort from Rin and a yawn from Haruka.

"Very well, then!" He huffs, twirls around to face the girls' dorm building and places one hand gingerly on top of the railing. "Let me begin this road towards success with a quote from Rin-san."

"Rei, don't. I swear to god I will  _sit on your glasses_ —"

"I will show you a sight you've never seen before!"

" _Why_."

He raises his arm up high, eyes the surrounding area and tries to get a feel for current wind conditions. Slight breeze due west. Negligible. Distance between Point A to Point B approximately fifteen metres. As he had measured days prior. He could take more accurate measurements if the Physics Club had let him borrow their equipment, but their response was, predictably, the middle finger and slamming the door at his face.

He breathes, a slow inhale, clears his mind, readies his heart for the slight flick of wrist for the precise amount of force needed to throw the plane safely across the threshold.

"It's not going to work," Haruka says.

"Please have faith in me, Haruka-senpai."

Haruka shrugs, his universal body language for  _don't say I didn't warn you._ Among other similar variants.

"Hurry up, Rei-chan! I want to see the result of you getting, like, ten-thousand paper cuts!"

"I DID NOT GET TEN THOUSAND PAPER CUTS!"

"Shhh no need to be ashamed—"

" _I'm going to throw the plane now!"_

A gentle back pull movement of his hand, and barely even a throw. Paper planes with lengthier wings are great for long gliding periods, he finds. Perfect for bridging the distance between two people with a government-run civilian park getting in the way of their love. It soars gracefully under the bright blue spring afternoon sky, white, clean, and crisp, geometrical shapes and angles over cotton-like rolls of Cirrocumulus clouds.

The shadow it casts brushes the top of the brick wall, a gentle flit of a touch as it leaves their dorm perimeter, floating endlessly, continuing forward,  _forward—_

Only to rapidly change trajectory downwards for a nosedive.

Rei watches in abject horror, frozen still where he stands, a metronomic gurgle of noises leaving the back of his throat.

" _WHY?!_ "

**——————-**

It takes each of them running out to the park to find the fallen paper plane and get it back up to the roof, and Nagisa giving Rei a half-crying look before Rei finally admits defeat and gives up.

Haruka doesn't have the heart to level him an  _I-told-you-so_  look when Rin can't even find it in him to laugh at the failure.

At the very least, Rei isn't curled up by the door muttering prime numbers as he reflects on his mistakes. That's another monster entirely. Rei deserves to be spared from further humiliation, Haruka thinks. The poor boy has felt enough heartbreak in his lifetime.

**——————-**

Perhaps it's just out of sympathy for Rei's failure—Haruka winces when he remembers it himself—but the next few days his friends seem to have decided to not touch the subject of his love life. It's a bit weird, after all the ruckus and their (unwelcomed, Haruka thinks) enthusiasm, that they're leaving him and his letter-writing routine alone now, but for once, since he doesn't have to be constantly worried over whether they're making weird gestures in front of the windows to get Yazaki's attention or something, he relaxes.

In hindsight, he really shouldn't have. In fact, he really should have question everything when Rin keeps flipping through his sketchbook without a single comment, or when Makoto doesn't throw him a knowing look whenever he glances out the window. Or maybe when it's Yamazaki who brings him Yazaki's letter one evening, with only a smirk as he puts it on Haruka's desk and goes back out of the room.

He'd blame it on the fact that Yazaki's letters have become much more colourful and pretty, later, but for now, Haruka just opens the envelope carefully and breathes in the scent of oranges.

**——————-**

There is a bird nest on the branch of the tree leaning against the wall by Yazaki's window. Haruka remembers the doodles along a page of letter that smells like oranges, and feels the corners of his mouth twitch up almost subconsciously.

He drags a hand down his face and tries not to think about it.

"Okay," he hears Rin say from behind, sounding amused. "I think he unlocked another level."

"Rii _-iinn_ ," Makoto's whine sounds longer, in the early summer breeze. The sun is alsready so bright despite it's not even seven in the morning, too. "Be nice."

"I always am," Rin snorts, and Haruka hears a bunch of rustling sounds that tickles something in the back of his mind. "I wouldn't be doing this if I'm not nice. Ready, Sousuke?"

It's a pity that Haruka's reflexes has been slow as of late.

"Let's goooooo!!"

And then Rin and Yamazaki are a blur of red and black, rushing forward and whooping loud enough for several crows to shriek above their heads, their hands holding up Haruka's sketchbook high—how the hell had they managed to take it and bring it this far without him realizing it?—stopping right before Yazaki's open window, and waving the sketchbook almost wildly.

Haruka, helplessly rooted on the ground, watches as Yazaki leans out of her window, eyes wide as she reads whatever it is written on his sketchbook, before turning those wide eyes to Haruka, looking surprised.

 _Oh god_ , Haruka thinks.  _Why me_.

Then she disappears from the window, and Haruka feels something in his stomach drop. That's it, then. Whatever his friends had written on his sketchbook and shown Yazaki, it had probably made her think that they're a bunch of weird boys, and thus Haruka is also weird, and she would probably never ever—

"Oh," he hears Makoto exclaims, excitement lacing his voice. "Haru! Your phone!"

Haruka blinks at him, completely at loss. "What."

"Here," Makoto's hand outstretches, palm holding the familiar dark blue smartphone that is Haruka's own. "You always forget it."

It's  _his_ phone. Which somehow is in Makoto's hand. It's also vibrating, the default tone chirping in a low volume, and Haruka hesitates for a moment before taking it off Makoto's hand. Unknown number, he reads, but slides his thumb across to answer anyway.

"Ah!" the word echoes—clear as a bell, both from the phone pressed against his ear and from the still open window that belongs to Yazaki Aki. "I really got through! Nanase-kun?"

Haruka's world stutters to a halt, and the heat climbs up his face so fast he nearly feels dizzy. By his side, Makoto laughs happily, giving a thumb up towards where Rin and Sousuke are still holding the sketchbook high, a clear sign of mission accomplished. Haruka would have given him a betrayed look, if it isn't for the fact that he sees Yazaki steps back out to her balcony, beaming brightly as she waves at him, sunflower smile stretching wide over her lips.

"It's so nice to have your number," Yazaki says in his ears, softer than the wind and yet brighter than the sun. "Now we can talk whenever!"

"Uh," Haruka says eloquently, unable to pay attention to how Makoto steer him forward, continuing their jogs, or how Rin's satisfied laughter rings louder than the shrieks of the crows and Yamazaki is giving him winning looks again. He mentally kicks himself,  _be cool, Nanase Haruka_ , and answers, "Hey, Yazaki."

But Yazaki's laughter tinkles gently in his ear. "Hi, Nanase-kun," she says, and Haruka meets her eyes as he passes under her balcony, sees the still half-done tiny braids that bounce against the curve of her cheek. "I have to hurry for school today, but let's talk later, okay?"

"Uh," Haruka replies, and Yazaki laughs once more before giving him a last tiny wave and disappearing back into her room.

All he hears now is the tone of cut line, and the last of Yamazaki's snark: "—he obviously don't have enough status level to be coherent."

Haruka doesn't even care—not when he still sees Yazaki's curtains flapping against the open window, and the bird's nest precariously perched on the branch, tiny chirps clear in the summer breeze.

**——————-**

Gou thinks she hears her brother's laughter hanging in the air when she opens Aki's door. She shakes her head—must be her imagination. As stupid as her brother and his friends are, they would not be making ruckuss right by the girls' dorm and risk getting caught by the dorm's keepers.

"Aki-senpai?"

Said girl is standing on the balcony, her cellphone pressed close to her ears, eyes soft and her trademark sunflower smile a perfect curve on her face. Gou pauses, puzzles it out for a second, and Aki turns from the balcony to catch her eyes, ending her conversation with whoever it is on the phone.

Gou breaks into a sharp grin. "Eeeh, Aki-senpai has a boyfriend?"

"What? No—" Aki laughs, but Gou has enough experience with Chigusa pining over her middle school crush to notice the faint shade of red that dusts Aki's cheeks. "Not my boyfriend, it's just—"

"Then, soon-to-be?" Gou teases, ponytail bouncing as she crosses the room with all intentions to investigate. "Who's the lucky guy that caught our school's swimming club's star?"

"It's really not like that," Aki bats at her laughingly, turning around to reach for her comb and presumably finish the half-braided bangs curving over her ear. Nimble fingers twine the strands effortlessly, before Aki proceeds to snatch her bag off her desk. "Let's go, we'll be late for morning practice."

"Come on, senpai, I always tell you about Sei."

"You'll tell me about your boyfriend even if I don't ask."

"It'd be great if you have a boyfriend, though. We can go on a double date."

Aki's laughter rings in the halls as her door closes behind them. "Going on a double date with you is going to be such a bad idea."

"Aki-senpai, so rude!"

**——————-**

"Text her," Rin says, and Haruka just stares at his phone some more. Rin groans, exasperation and irritation all rolled into one, and throws a pillow at Haruka. Makoto catches it from the side before it hits Haruka, and Rin throws him a hurtful look.

He gets an apologetic smile from Makoto, but not without a light scolding of, "Rin, be nice."

"He's going to render all of our work useless," Rin says, one finger pointing straight at Haruka. "He just needs to text her, and I could go back to my room to get ready for school."

"You can go back and get ready for school right now," Haruka deadpans, eyes still not leaving his phone. Rin sends him a glare.

" _Priorities_ , Haru."

"Rin's right, though, Haru," Makoto points out, clearly trying to carry the role of a good boyfriend by taking Rin's side. "If you just keep staring at your phone nothing is going to happen. And you'll also be late for school."

Haruka raises his gaze, stares at Makoto for a long, long time.

Makoto scratches his cheek. "Uuhh," he says, sounding thoughtful. "For starters, maybe saying hi would be a good idea?"

**——————-**

Sending a  _'Hey, Yazaki'_  is probably a bad idea.

Because it's been fifteen minutes and Haruka has changed into his school uniform, bags ready and hair tamed, gakuran properly buttoned all the way up, bed made and desk clean, and Yazaki still hasn't replied.

Maybe he should stop trusting Makoto about his love life, after all.

Haruka represses the urge to sigh as he checks his phone again. Still silent as ever—no notification of a message, less so a missed call. Maybe this is Yazaki's way to tell him that she's not interested—she is probably too nice to just say it in front of his face this morning, and figures that she should just ignore Haruka. Maybe letters had been enough, and phone conversations are pushing her limit. Maybe—

The phone in his hand vibrates; a cheerful chime of incoming message as it lights up in Haruka's hand, displaying the characters of  _Yazaki Aki_ , and Haruka drops it.

He curses inwardly as he bends down and snatches it from the floor, ignoring how his fingers are slightly shaking in favor of trying to breathe through the sudden marathon his heart seems to have decided to go on. The notification blinks up at him from under his thumb, and Haruka nods to himself before sliding his thumb across his phone screen and opens the message.

It begins with a  _Hi, Nanase-kun!_  and a cute emoticon that Haruka recognizes as the one Nagisa uses often to say hi through texts, and then a short  _It's nice that we can talk even more now that we have each other's number, right? Thank you for texting me!_

The corners of Haruka's mouth twitch up.  _Even her texts are bright_ , he thinks, almost helplessly, before pausing and shakes his head. Admittedly, he's rather horrified to find these thoughts floating in his head rather easily nowadays, but it's really hard to care with Yazaki's message siting in his inbox now.

And he used to think Makoto and Rin were gross. Well, they still are, but he supposes he could understand a tiny litle bit now. Just a little bit.

He does have a more pressing problem now, though.

A simple  _yes, it's nice_ , would probably be too short. Would saying  _thank you_  back be weird?  _Have a great day_  would be good, but would that also mean ending the conversation? In the first place, if he replies straight away, would it be weird? Would he seem too eager? How long should he wait before he could reply? Ten minutes, fifteen, twenty?

Haruka lowers his phone and sighs.

He goes to find Makoto.

**——————-**

Nagisa peeks from behind Rei's shoulder, curious eyes wide. "Is Haru-chan brooding?"

"It's fine," Sousuke says, reaching out to steal a piece of tonkatsu from Rin's bentou—the owner too preoccupied with drilling English lessons into Makoto's brain in the face of a test after lunch. "The process of grinding for experience points is painful."

Rei throws him a worried look. "He's been staring at his phone non-stop."

Nagisa perks. "Maybe if I get him an Iwasame bread, Haru-chan would cheer up!"

"Leave him be," Rin says sagely, one hand moving his bentou box to another table Sousuke can't reach. "He's been waiting for a reply all morning. There hasn't been one. He's just in shock."

Rei stares some more at Haruka, eyebrows tauting. "Are we... sure this is a good thing?"

"I can hear you all," Haruka mutters, hating every second of his life right now. "And she has  _classes_."

Rin pats him on the shoulder lightly. "Love is irrational isn't it, Haru."

Haruka glares at him and bats his hand away.

**——————-**

Unlike her long letters, Yazaki's texts are always short.

They don't always text—Haruka still feels unsure whether or not he's being too forward (or, according to the others, whether he actually makes a move at all) by initiating the texting most of the time, and Yazaki turns out to have a very busy daily life. She's the ace of her school's swimming club, a class representative, and tutors her juniors in her limited free time. Haruka doesn't know how Yazaki still has time to reply to his texts, albeit half an hour or four hours later, but he'd take what he can, at this point.

He does learn not to brood over Yazaki not replying straight away. Eventually.

Iwasame Boys High Swimming Club manages to snag a place to compete in the Nationals, Haruka does a relay with Makoto, Nagisa and Rei, and comes in third place, not even a second difference behind Rin's relay team (who has the advantage of having Mikoshiba Seijuurou doing breaststroke—there is a reason why Mikoshiba is the Captain of Iwasame team, after all). It's all adrenaline and tension and  _youth_ , and Haruka doesn't grin like Rin does or laugh like Makoto does, but he hides smiles into people's shoulders when they hug him, and he thinks that's enough.

Except when the last of adrenaline rush leaves him that night in the hotel, his phone chimes with Yazaki's message:  _Congratulations! I watched you swim today, Nanase-kun! You were amazing! Wish me luck for my race tomorrow too, alright?_

Haruka attempts to suffocate himself with his pillow so he doesn't start making weird noises.

(Yazaki's relay team doesn't get medals, but Yazaki snags the silver for freestyle, and Haruka never sees someone brighter on the podium.)

They celebrate—pictures and war over yakiniku meats and pillow fights and insane plans about sneaking into the girls team's hotel on the other side of the town. There are endless message chimes and phone calls bearing congratulations, and much, much later, heartfelt thanks exchanged in sappy manners that everyone would pretend to have never happened. 

After the Nationals, it's summer homework and what's left of their vacation days. It's being dragged to the beach and sending Yazaki pictures of the horizon stretching long in the distance. It's mising the window across his own opening every morning because Yazaki goes back home for the summer, and a stupid courage trial at the shrine's graveyard that ends with Makoto in tears.

Between the Nationals, days off that are somehow busier than school, and Yazaki's now-expected texts, Haruka looks up to the sky one day and suddenly realizes that summer is almost over.

**——————-**

After walking back and forth between the common room (where Rin is in a constant state of getting sniped within all five previous and currently sixth ongoing round of Splatoon) and the pantry (which has an undeniably empty fridge that Sousuke keeps double checking just in case some generous deity graces its empty confines with some tonkatsu ready to fry), Sousuke comes back after his tenth fruitless journey to find Mikoshiba standing tall and proud in front of the TV, hands on his hips and his back to Rin's inkling character pounding the ground in frustration. Beside him, stands Gou holding tiny note pad and a pencil tucked behind her ear.

Blatant abuse of dormhead powers. Her entire existence in this room is a contradiction of the very fabric of the universe unless Mikoshiba resorted to either charming the dorm keeper or sneaking her in.

They have matching looks of determination and excitement, enough to make Sousuke scrunch his nose by pure instinct take a few steps back out in to the hall.

The sharp inhale of Mikoshiba's breath as his puffs his chest out imminent sounds like trouble and Sousuke wants no part in this.

"So!" Mikoshiba barks out to each and every person in the room, his grin wide and almost maniacal. "It's our last week of summer break!"

_I'd like to be alive to see the end of it._

"Gou-kun and I thought we should all do something fun!""

_Mercy, no._

"So we decided to hold an Iwasame High School Swimming Clubs joint summer outing!"

_Go eat a di—_

_Wait._

Sousuke whips his head to Rin on the other side of the room, sending him a sharp glare. Rin looks back at him. They lock eyes. The two of them are far from Nanase and Makoto, neither of them possessing the wavelengths needed to communicate through sonar and air vibrations, but Sousuke is a firm believer of there's no such thing as being too late to start.

He spares a quick ninja glance towards Nanase on the sofa in the far corner. Tittering at a dangerous angle against the arm rest. Face blank. Lost in focus, perhaps. He's trying to get a somewhat decent view of the TV from the gap between the right angle of Mikoshiba's elbow. Winning at turf war mode with a slosher. Most likely won't notice Sousuke and Rin talking shit about him.

A jab of his finger towards Nanase, then a strong flick of his wrist to point at Mikoshiba. Rin follows his movements and looks back at him with eyes wide in realisation.  _Yes! He gets it! They're well on their way to mastering non-verbal communication._

He draws a rectangle in the air with both his index fingers.  _Yazaki._

He mimes tying a high ponytail behind his head. _Gou._

He hooks his fingers together, knuckles digging into his palms.  _Friends._

Rin nods, forceful, before making popping motions with his hands.  _Fireworks._

Rin draws with his fingers what seems to be a heart but looks more like a deformed peach to Sousuke. _Romantic._

Rin flaps his hands by his cheeks — miming a fish, probably.  _Haru._

And finally, a sweep of Rin's hands from one side of his head to somewhere under his chin on the opposite side in a catching motion.  _Chance?_

Sousuke knows it's a question because Rin then holds both of his hands palm up and lifts his shoulders.

Before he could answer however, Makoto leans up sideways against Rin and crosses his arms to form an X. He tilts his head and sends Sousuke a small smile. _We shouldn't do anything. I think they'll be fine, this time._

Squinting his eyes at Makoto hoping to convey distate, Sousuke stands there confused at how Makoto could say so much more in gestures simpler than theirs and how on top of that, he could apparently understand him with no problems as well.

Nonetheless, Makoto has a point. It's about time for the tutorial guys to back off and let the hero try a hand at fighting the first boss on his own.

**——————-**

Maybe it's because their schools and dorms are in the more secluded area that's closer to the mountains, but the shrines closest to their dorms are apparently not big enough for actual summer festivals. Sure, there are instances where the local people round up and do fireworks the students could watch from atop of the dorm roof, but it's not exactly the merry and festive atmosphere they're looking for a joint summer outing.

And so it turns out Mikoshiba Seijuurou has, with the help of Matsuoka Gou, managed to work with the Iwasame Girls High School Dorm's head, and organized a trip for both dorms' residents for a summer outing to the next town over where an old and rather popular shrine is holding a summer festival—food stalls, fireworks, omikoshi, and the whole nine yards.

Haruka spends the entire one-station-ride of the train behind Makoto's back because Yazaki is right there, chatting lightly and laughing with Gou, heads knocked together as Gou shows something on her phone to her. But that isn't his point—his point is that Yazaki is there.

In yukata. A bright yellow yukata with swans and sunflowers motif, a matching fabric bag clutched in her hand, and a pale blue fan tucked into her obi. Her braids, for once, aren't curving along her jaw, but instead pulled back up into a small bun adorned with a hairpin that dangles and moves with each sway of her head, and Haruka is  _entranced_.

"I didn't know Gou is close friends with Yazaki," Yamazaki murmurs somewhere behind him, sounding miffed. "I thought they're friends in the usual senpai-kouhai friendship context."

Makoto makes an agreeing noise. "Rin, did you know?"

"She never mentioned a thing," Rin grouches, sending a disapproving look towards Gou, who just blinks in confusion at him when she catches the look. Yazaki, noticing Gou's distraction, looks up and glances at them.

She catches Haruka's eyes, and smiles.

Haruka might have made an undignified noise at the back of his throat, because Yamazaki is giving him amused half-smirks now. 

The chime rings over their heads, announcing that they're arriving in the next station very soon. The hairpin dangling from Yazaki's bun sways again, left-right-left-right, enticing Haruka's line of sight.

"You gotta make this chance count, Haru," Rin is saying, but Haruka doesn't listen, because Yazaki is laughing again at something in Gou's phone, and as long as that smile exists, Haruka thinks he doesn't need anything else.

**——————-**

Under what must be hundreds of lanterns hanging overheads, casting vague shapes of humans, people of all age walk, some in summer yukata accompanied by the click-clack of geta against the ground. The scent of festival food hangs in the air, beckoning warmth that makes the summer just that much more hot. It's laughter and smiles wherever he turns—the night bright and the festival even more so, with kids chasing one another and pushing into crowds, young couples holding hands, and parents spoiling their children.

Haruka just focuses on squeezing through the crowds, so none of his traitorous friends could find him. He could literally sense them plotting something by the time they step off the train—a lot of eye-contacts with Gou, who just looks incredibly confused, and one too many whispers exchanged under their breath, and Haruka decides he shouldn't take any chances.

He'd sneaked away and let the throngs of people carry him off his friends' circle, once they stepped into the shrine's ground. It's a matter of picking the right route from there—he can still enjoy the festival while remembering to change direction every ten minutes and keeping an eye open for any sign of his school's swimclub. As long as he doesn't bump into Nagisa, he knows he's 90% safe, anyway.

Passing by a bunch of children crouching around a stall, he pauses, listening to the tiny sounds of splash underlining the children's frustrated growls and and victorious shouts. A game stall—the yo-yo tsuri stall.

He leans over the children's head to take a better look. The yo-yo balloon bobs up comfortably in the water, disturbed by hands trying to catch the tiny loop at the end of its string. These bunch of kids don't seem to be winning much—not with the way they're holding their piece of paper to fish the yo-yo ballons out of the water.

"Don't grip it too hard," he advises to the kid closest to him. The boy whips his head up, clearly surprised, and Haruka crouches next to him. "It's like goldfish fishing."

"Hmph," the boy snorts, and holds up his piece of paper. "If you know so much, then why don't you do it, Oniichan?"

And that's how he ends up catching yo-yo balloons for the small crowd of wide-eyed kids. Haruka's always been good at this kind of game, anyway—Rin once reasons that it's because the game involves water and water loves Haruka, which doesn't make it a wonder if it just gives up all the goldfishes or yo-yo baloons Haruka's chasing. He's not unfamiliar to the begrudging look the stall owner sends his way, either.

He's trying to catch the bright yellow yo-yo balloon when someone drops to crouch by his side and says, "Wow, Nanase-kun, you're really good at this."

His hand movement stutters in surprise because of all people, it's  _Yazaki Aki_  who is crouching next to him now—her dangling hairpin swaying almost hypnotically as she leans forward to watch him try catching yo-yo balloons. The scent of orange intensifies around him, and Haruka stares, forgetting the piece of paper in his hand completely.

Her head tilts, the curve of her chin pale under the lantern's light as she catches his eyes. "Nanase-kun?"

"Uh," Haruka says, and quickly rips his eyes off Yazaki, turning back to the piece of paper in his hand like it's his lifegoal all this time and he has finally obtained it. He hears Yazaki's chuckle, light and airy over his ears, calling out to the stall owner and asking for a piece of paper.

Haruka side-glances towards her again—the folds of her yukata and the curve of her neck, for once exposed to the air. There's a piece of paper in between her fingers now, and Yazaki turns to him with a smile, holding it up. "I'm going to try, too!"

He could hear the exact second his mind begins to  _flail_ internally. "Uh. Yeah."

Yazaki, as it turns out, isn't very good at this. Half of it is probably because she's trying not to let he yukata sleeve dip into the water, but most of it is just because she always tries to snag the yo-yo balloon with too much force. It takes her four tries of chasing a red yo-yo balloon bobbing across the water, breaking her piece of paper every time, before she finally admits defeat with the slightest pout over her lips.

Haruka catches himself staring at her pout, and ducks his head to fight the heat threatening to rise up his face.

"How do you do it, Nanase-kun?" she complains, staring dejectedly at the piece of paper in her hand. The yellow yo-yo balloon Haruka was eyeing bobs its way towards her—a matching shade with her yukata, almost like the personification of summer sun.

And just like that, almost without thinking, Haruka reaches out and snags the yellow yo-yo balloon from the water, right before Yazaki's eyes.

The fascinated look in her eyes when he moves is enough to make something in his chest  _soar_.

"That's amazing!" she breathes, eyes wide as they follow the yellow yo-yo balloon in Haruka's hand. "Nanase-kun, that's amazing!"

Too bright. Haruka averts his eyes, putting aside his piece of paper, and stares at the yo-yo balloon. The kids are cheering around him—he doesn't actually want to keep the yo-yo balloon as a prize, but he'd won one for each of the kid there anyway. His fingers curl very carefully around the balloon, its shade of yellow somehow looking different out of the water, and turns to Yazaki. "You can have this."

Yazaki blinks. "Me?"

Haruka shrugs, awkwardly. "If you...want."

There's indescribable joy and warmth that fills his chest, at the way Yazaki breaks into a wide smile—her eyes crinkling and a shade of red spreading across her cheeks. Haruka hears the tinklings of wind chimes in time to the swaying of Yazaki's hairpin, a delicate sound lost in the stuffy summer night breeze.

Her fingers brush against his own when she accepts the yo-yo balloon, and Haruka closes his eyes with a sigh.

**——————-**

In-between tiny bites of takoyaki, Aki tells Nanase, "I saw your friends looking for you."

Nanase seems unbothered about that, from the way he just hums lightly and continues to examine the Ultraman mask she'd bought for him as an exchange for the yo-yo baloon in her hand. Aki wonders if she should also tell her that she'd left his friends in the middle of arguing with Gou over dating Mikoshiba (and not telling them that Gou is friends with her? Boys are weird.), and decides otherwise. Instead, she taps on Nanase's elbow and offers the small box of takoyaki in her hand.

Nanase's eyes flit from her to the box of takoyaki. "Ah. No..thanks, I'm okay."

"But this is good," Aki insists, shoving the toothpick she's holding into Nanase's palm. "You should try a bite!"

"A bi—" Nanase looks at her, wide-eyed, before turning his gaze to the toothpick she'd placed in his palm like he's never seen a toothpick before. There's a faint shade of red dusting his cheeks, and Aki tilts her head wonderingly. Maybe she should have gotten another toothpick? Not everyone is comfortable sharing what they use, even if Aki doesn't have a problem with it—

Nanase's fingers move in jerky motions so unlike the grace he'd shown in catching the yo-yo balloon when he finally takes the toothpick and stabs one of the takoyaki. Aki smiles, finding it cute, somehow, and watches as he takes a tiny bite of the takoyaki. "Good, right?"

He looks away. "They're stingy on the sauce."

That's what she enjoys the most in her conversations with Nanase: his responses are almost always unexpected. She giggles, fondly, and accepts back the toothpick, sticking it in-between her teeth as she fumbles with her fabric bag.

She completely misses the way Nanase's eyes widen as he flushes.

**——————-**

That was—Rin would have called that an _indirect kiss_ , with his annoying teasing grin.

Right?

Haruka inwardly kicks himself for the thought. Clearly, Yazaki isn't even thinking anything else other than let's make Nanase-kun try the takoyaki, and there's nothing good that could come up from thinking about it too much—it's not like Yazaki intended that to be an indirect kiss. Even if it technically is.

Right?

He shakes his head, tells himself to forget about it, and wishes his face doesn't feel as warm as it is now. Yazaki might notice, he thinks helplessly, and begins to desperately wish for one of his friends to pop out of nowhere and distract him with their most probably insane ideas—at least it would stop him from blushing. He'd even take Yamazaki at this point.

God, Nanase Haruka, be cool.

And perhaps it's because the thought had already made its way into his mind, nesting there and curling in the back like a mischievous demon, but he can't stop thinking about it. The curve of Yazaki's cheek, the crinkle in the corners of her eyes when she smiles and points out at the cotton candy stalls. The way her tongue darts out to catch the stray pink-and-white cottons sticking to her chin when she takes a bite of the cotton candy. The way she bites her lower lip when she tries not to laugh.

Nanase Haruka, for the first time in his life, understands what raging hormones means, because all he could think of now revolves around how Yazaki's lips would feel against his own.

"There he is!" and oh, thank God for small miracles. Makoto and Rin are waving from where the shooting stalls are—Makoto seemingly excited to see him with Yazaki, and Rin with his infuriating shit-eating grin. "Haru! Yazaki!"

"Tachibana-kun, Matsuoka-kun!" Aki waves back, laughing as Makoto and Rin closes the distance between them. "I thought Gou-chan is with you?"

Rin sniffs, giving a furious air. "She chose Mikoshiba-buchou over us. Over her  _brother_. Over—"

"Rin," Makoto elbows him from the side. "Let them have their date in peace."

Yazaki's chuckle hangs softly between them, and Haruka's eyes are still fixed at the spot where she'd missed the stray cotton candy, pink-white against her skin, teasingly clinging to the corner of her mouth.

"—should look for a good place to see the fireworks," she says cheerfully, falling into steps with Rin following right behind her. "Let's go!"

"Haru?" Makoto taps his shoulder, sounding concerned probably at the fact that Haruka barely blinks at all ever since they found each other. "Are you okay?"

Haruka sighs. Revels in the guilt, before he opens his mouth for the confession.

"Makoto."

"Yes?"

"...I might have sinned."

".....e-eeehh??"

**——————-**

The first of the firework launches with a gorgeous sound of whistle, its muffled explosion a gentle bump in the clear summer night sky.

They didn't find a comfortable place to watch the fireworks, but that's because they managed to snag a space very close to where they're launching the fireworks, which means it is a very good and a very crowded spot. None of them minds the stuffy heat of the crowds, though—not with the crackle of various colours raining overheads making vague shapes of blooming flowers and petals.

Haruka catches Makoto and Rin's hands, tangled in between the press of their bodies, hidden from others' sight. For once, he can't find it in him to make a face at them and tell them to stop being gross. Not when his shoulder and arm are pressing flush against Yazaki's own, the fabric of her yukata tangling in the crook of his elbow. They have no room to move, not with these crowds, but Yazaki isn't looking at anything else, eyes fixed upwards to the sky, the curve of her face illuminated by the lights of the fireworks.

Haruka has to remind himself to breathe.

"Sometimes," Yazaki murmurs, nearly inaudible if it isn't for the fact that they're pressed so close together it's impossible for Haruka to not have heard it. "I wish each of those fireworks could grant wishes. Wouldn't it be amazing?"

He's not the type to entertain those thoughts, normally. Those are Rin's style—romantic and sappy—but under the rain of lights and Yazaki's soft eyes glittering at the colours dancing in the sky, Haruka thinks, that would be great.

"Maybe they are," he says, equally soft. "There's just too many people here. They can't grant everyone's wishes."

Yazaki blinks, looking surprised as she turns her gaze towards him, and Haruka, for once, finds it in him to hold her eyes.

The laugh that escapes her lips is drowned by the next whistle of the fireworks, but not her words.

"Nanase-kun, that's so cute."

He hopes the fireworks doesn't illuminate the way his face goes red.

**——————-**

He keeps the Ultraman mask hung above his desk and ignores the snickerings and odd looks he gets from literally everyone entering his room. None of them tries to so much as touch the mask, though, which means they know that they shouldn't mess with it, and Haruka's satisfied with just that.

After all, keeping the stash of Yazaki's letter safe inside his locked desk drawer is proving to be hard enough. Nagisa gets increasingly creative when he's curious.

As the last of summer heat fades away and the autumn breeze grows stronger, comes with it the anticipation of cultural festival planning—student council and classes meetings, budget countings and arguments on booth plans, and, much to the swim club's chagrin: the maid uniform.

"It's a tradition!" Seijuurou laughs boisterously at horrified faces before him. "First years, good luck. Second years, hang in there, this is your last year doing this, so you should enjoy!" One strong hand finds Haruka's shoulder, clapping firmly. "You're in charge of the maid uniform design this year too, Nanase."

"I'll do my best," Haruka says, and makes a mental note to add as many ribbons as he could on his friends' uniform designs.

**——————-**

Aki knows about the boys' swimming club doing the maid cafe—mostly because Gou has been loudly amused at every progress her boyfriend has been telling her. She has to admit her curiosity though—it's one thing to wear a maid uniform, but it's completely a whole other thing to look good in a maid uniform and flit about around the classroom serving drinks and shamelessly flirt with customers.

Which is what Nanase Haruka is apparently doing, considering he's currently leaning his hip against the edge of a table and bending down in the most hilarious way towards one of the male students wearing the baseball club's uniform, taking orders in the most deadpan face Aki has ever seen.

"Oh my god," she whispers into her palms, laughter tumbling out of her lips as she watches from the class windows. "Gou, oh my god."

Gou grins at her. "Pretty good, huh?"

Aki doesn't blink as she watches Haru absent-mindedly slaps a customer's hand attempting to pull on one of the ribbons adorning his fluffy skirt, his steps fast and even as he strides down the narrow spaces between tables, despite the fact that he's wearing high heels. "That's—at least three inches high, oh my—" she pauses, eyes wide as Haruka stops dead in front of three boys in the corner table who are laughing at a red-faced Nitori, and flaps his skirt with a straight face, effectively shutting the boys up and sending everyone in the vicinity spluttering. From across the room, Makoto yelps out Haruka's name, flustered, with Rin snickering on the background.

Aki bursts out laughing. “Oh my god!”

“We can come in if you want, Senpai,” Gou says, her trademark Matsuoka grin still stretching over her lips. She glances over to the entrance, where Nagisa chirps happily at people waiting in line, his blond twintails bouncing as he literally shoves menus into people’s hands, and winces. “Or, well—we can wait until the line isn’t so bad.”

“Let’s go around and check out other booths and classes,” Aki says, the remains of laughter still underlining her voice. She throws another glance into the class, watches as Haruka neatly evades a stumbling Rei with a tray of three different-coloured drinks in his hand. “He’s really good at this, isn’t he?”

“Well,” Gou says sagely. “They say that it’s hard to get Haruka-senpai into doing something he doesn’t want, but when you got him to do something, he’d do it as best as he can.”

Aki hides a smile under a gloved hand, eyes following Haruka’s figure until he disappears behind a partitioned wall.

“I think,” she says brightly. “That’s a very good trait to have.”

**——————-**

He supposes he didn't really think it through when he designed the maid uniform.

He doesn't really mind wearing it, honestly. It's just a _skirt_ —he'd worn worse when he plays with the Tachibana twins. There's no use in protesting Mikoshiba Seijuurou anyway, not when he's literally the most powerful student in the school as well as the dorm, and Haruka can handle skirts and high-heels just fine. Wearing a maid uniform and working in the cafe isn't a problem for him—it's just serving drinks and snacks and possibly doing some twirls in front of various giggling girls, purposefully getting up and close to some boys just to make them flustered and awkward, and maybe ignore the instances he caught Rin trying to squeeze Makoto's ass.

Then again Nagisa has been doing the same to everyone's ass, so he supposes that's alright.

He doesn't even realize the problem until Seijuurou shoves him a tray of their homemade cookies samples (courtesy to Nitori's cousin's bakery) and sends him out to advertise their maid cafe in the school grounds. Which is still not a problem, Haruka can handle running in high-heels when they're less than five centimeters high, except then he has to do a little maneuver to avoid the Iwasame mascot cutting it too close to his tray, and he ends up stepping back to bump against someone, grappling for balance for a moment before he decides to sacrifice his balance and surrender to the gravity in order to save the tray.

"Oh!" he hears, and the voice is so familiar that something in his stomach instantly does a free fall, settling down with a sinking feeling of shit-shit-shit. "I'm sorry, I wasn't watching, are you okay?"

 _Don't look up_ , Haruka tells himself, but of course his body doesn't obey his brain anymore, because he looks up slowly, and finds a prince before him.

Yazaki Aki's eyes crinkle slightly, sunflower smile curving over her lips, bangs swaying as she bends down slightly to offer a hand, her pressed white tuxedo almost blinding under the sun. There's a small crown made of fabrics pinned on top of her head, twined in between tiny braids, and Haruka forgets to breathe.

The laugh that escapes Yazaki's lips tinkle in his ear. "Nanase-kun?"

Haruka opens his mouth, closes it again, and ducks his head to hide the heat rushing up his face.

"Ah, your club is doing a maid cafe, right?" another giggle, softer this time, reaches Haruka's eyes. He wishes he has enough courage to look up, to take her hand, to do  _something_. "I'm sorry I'm still wearing this—Gou-chan dragged me out right after my class' production, I didn't have the chance to change my costume."

You look good, Haruka wants to say, but he realizes that exact second that  _he's wearing a maid uniform_ —and  _Yazaki is seeing him in a maid uniform_.

Yazaki. Is seeing him. In a maid uniform.

"Um, I've always wanted to try saying this, but sticking a  _'my Princess'_  here would be too much, wouldn't it?"

He wants to die. God, please let him die.

"Ah, but you look very cute, Nanase-kun!"

Haruka pushes himself to his feet, catches a glimpse of Yazaki's sunflower smile, nods, turns around, and runs away.

**——————-**

Rin finds Haruka on the back of their makeshift pantry on the partitioned part of the classroom they use for the maid cafe, crouching on the floor with a tray held close to his chest and his head hung darkly like he's given up on life. Makoto's on his knees by his side, patting Haruka's shoulder sympathetically, the knee-length skirt folded properly under his feet, and Rin raises his eyebrows.

"I can see your panties, Haru."

Makoto looks torn between looking scandalous, a little bit jealous, and curious. Rin waves dismissively, rolling his eyes. "He isn't really wearing panties, Makoto."

His boyfriend flushes beet red. "I know that."

"I can see your panties, Nanase," comes from behind him, and Rin grins, because he and Sousuke might not have that telepathic connection Haruka and Makoto have, but they're certainly almost always in the same wavelengths. He raises a hand for a high-five, which Sousuke obeys with questioning look, and Rin just shrugs. "We have five tables needing to be manned, what are you guys doing here."

"Haru bumped into Yazaki-san," Makoto tells them helpfully, and Haruka makes a pained groan. "She was a Prince."

"Bet you five hundred yen Nanase ran away," Sousuke mutters. Rin elbows him discreetly because Makoto sends them a disapproving frown, which is also as good a confirmation of Haruka really did run away. It's probably karma, Rin thinks, because obviously it's Haruka's own fault for designing these maid uniforms—these ribbons on their skirts are a literal pain in the ass—and he only feels slightly awful for thinking about it.

So he drops on a crouch before Haruka, throwing a smirk at Makoto when his boyfriend very pointedly tries not to stare at Rin's briefs peeking out from underneath his hiked up skirt. "Did she laugh at you, Haru?"

For a second, it looks like Haruka folds in further into himself, and Makoto answers, "She offered her hand to help him up."

Sousuke lets out a low whistle. Rin ignores that. "Tell me that you at least took her hand."

Silence. Rin drags a hand over his face. "You are helpless."

Someone out there yells their names—Mikoshiba, most likely, judging from the sheer volume and the promise of regret if they don't come out that second to get back to work. Sousuke sighs. "Well, the cafe's not going to wait for Nanase bouncing back."

Rin pushes himself back to his feet. "Come on, Haru, you'll feel better after messing with a bunch of uptight boys from the student council."

**——————-**

"Oh," Yazaki says brightly, eyes dancing as she stands on the entrance with Gou by her side, her sunflower smile tinted with amusement. "Nanase-kun!"

Haruka turns a betrayed look at Gou, who beams in return. "We came to visit!"

"Right," Haruka says, and moves to turn around and run, except two hands grab both of his wrists and prevent him from making a strategic retreat.

The glint in Rin’s smile is positively evil, Haruka decides. “Don’t run away, Haru.”

“If you don’t finish this side quest, you’re never going to get a special skill,” Sousuke adds, and Haruka really, really wants to wipe that smirk off his face.

He doesn’t fight the harsh pull that nearly sends him stumbling in front of Yazaki—maybe if he doesn’t look up and catch Yazaki’s eyes, all of these are just going to be a dream and nothing else. Even as Rin, too cheerfully, tells Yazaki that, “As a special service, you’ll have our best maid at your service!”

Traitors. Each one of his friends and everyone related to them are traitors. Haruka rises his eyes, throwing Makoto a wide-eyed look, a last desperate plea of  _please get me out of here_ , but Makoto—

—takes a step back behind Rin’s back with an apologetic look before giving Haruka a confident nod. _You can do it, Haru!_

Haruka stares at him, long and hard.  _Traitor._

Makoto gives him a sheepish smile.

Haruka should have known hooking Makoto and Rin up was a mistake.

**——————-**

Nanase serves her the special Autumn Lemonade, and drops a couple of orange candies onto the coaster as well.

Aki blinks. “I didn’t order these.”

Nanase pauses, blue eyes catching hers for a moment before flitting out somewhere else. “On the house.”

She brightens. “Really?”

“I think,” each syllable is halting, hesitant, and Aki looks at him—the thin line of his lips, the tensed line of his jaw, the way his eyes refuse to meet her own. “They suit you.”

She stares at the candies—the pretty yellow wrappings with cute little mikan adorning its edges, the bright green letters spelling the brand, glinting metallic lines crisscrossing the paperwrap, the faint scent of orange that greets her nose. Her lips curve into a smile as she pokes those candies with the tip of her finger, rolling them to bump into one another.

“Hey, Nanase-kun,” she says, with a warmth on her cheeks that surprises her, somewhat. “If you’re not busy after your shift, would you mind showing me around the festival?”

**——————-**

The moment Haruka and Yazaki leaves the room, it's like the dead had just descended amongst the merry members of the currently crossdressing Iwasame Boys High School Swim Club. Rin whips his head back towards the centre of the room, and he swears everyone did the same in perfect sync. Deafening silence rings between them, and perhaps on them alone. He distantly hears the clattering utensils and glass clinking behind muffled murmurs of their customers' conversation between themselves. Sparing a thought to check is the last thing on his mind right now as he keeps hard contact with the assembled members of the Project Human Haru Executive Committee.

_"Haru-chan's going on a date!"_

Nagisa's conspirational gasp feels like the shock of jumping into ice cold water. If the customers didn't notice anything out of the ordinary before, they most definitely would notice five young men with gorgeous sculpted bodies behind layers and layers of frill slamming themselves against the classroom door.

The loud _bang_  that came with it probably helps, too.

"I want to see, I want to see!" Nagisa squeals.

"Nagisa-kun stop pushing! My glasses are _dangerously close_  to cracking— LORD, MERCY." They've cracked, from the sounds of it. Rin will laugh at him some other time.

"I, as Haru's best friend, deserves by default the right to go check on him."

"But Rin, _I'm_  Haru's best friend." Poor Makoto's being wedged between the door with Sousuke. He's kind of jealous, but now is not the time for that. Nope. Rin knows his priorities, and in the face of a scientific breakthrough, even his boyfriend is going to get (lovingly) kicked down to back burner status.

"Who the fuck ever said he can't have two best friends?!"

"What am I to you Rin? Are you friend-cheating on me with Nanase?" Sousuke, the fucker, sounds completely indifferent, like he  _isn't currently using every muscle he has on his left leg to give him the pull he needs to free himself and sprint across the hall._

" _Look_ ," Rin growls. "There's no way I'm going to miss babby's first hand-holding and if I do,  _god so help me— WAUGH."_

The door not breaking is another small miracle of life, seeing the resultant force from making like a can of sardines are all of them in a pile on the ground out in the hallway.

With an extra topping of Mikoshiba dog-piling them with a boisterous laugh the moment he sees them.

**——————-**

They agreed on taking turns, in the end, but all five of them share a shift at the cafe. It would be an  _incredible wast_ e if they waited out until their break. Think of all the humiliation and love and  _humiliation_  they would miss out in the ten minutes they have left.  _Clearly,_ they have Haruka's best interest in mind. An uninvited and unseen group of moral support, if you will.

The resolution to their predicament, of course, was to have Nagisa distract Mikoshiba and Rin sneak into the backroom to change the roster. Rin thinks Mikoshiba wouldn't have noticed either way, not even without Sousuke being the one to sneak in to change it. Apparently, beyond human comprehension, Sousuke could copy someone's handwriting. He's starting to wonder if his best friend is a criminal.

Roster changed and Mikoshiba distracted, Nagisa and Rei set off for the first round of observational duties while Nakagawa comes back to the back room to see that he suddenly has an extra fifteen minutes added to the whole morning he had already worked.

"Matsuoka-senpai, are you okay?"

"Shut up, Nakagawa." Rin says to his hand, still holding up two fingers. The day his brethren, the scissors, betrays him is the day he needed it most to win. He curles into himself in the corner of the room and proceeds to cry into he knees.

**——————-**

Seijuurou watches Hazuki and Ryuugazaki flit out of the cafe in their uniforms, when he knows well that their shift doesnt end in another few minutes. He's not sure how they found their clothes, though — he had hid them inside the ceiling tiles and he likes to think that no one knows that they're easily pushed open and is  _great_  for impromptu secret stashes.

The good news is that it's  _Hazuki._ He won't snitch at least, so Seijuurou lives through the day without the worry of having to move a swim team's worth of uniforms somewhere else. The bad news is that it's _Hazuki_  and that he probably took his reserve of three-flavour potato chips along as well.

Arms crossed and a fond smile as he leans against the blackboard, he has to wonder his team's impression of him. He'd happily send them off if they just had  _asked._ He's not completely unaware of their little Nanase pet project.

Frankly, he's hurt that he hasn't even been considered

_For all the things he has done for his team..._

Is this that rebellious phase thing he hears of sometimes?

Walking into the back room, he takes the clipboard off the wall, spares a glance at Matsuoka despairing on the floor. He must really want the first look into Nanase's love life. Poor thing. Shaking his head, Seijuurou looks down the to the roster to find eraser marks under Matsuoka's handwriting. Nakagawa has three hours of work time in total. He needs to have a talk with the Matsuoka Squad about bullying Nakagawa. Nakagawa never asked for this.

It's charming, really, the way they find him a cross between a demon straight-laced captain (a maximum of two words in that phrase is actually true — Seijuurou couldn't  _believe_  the romantic entangles within his team sometimes) and an oblivious idiot. He'll have to mess with them for this at some point, but he'll let them off for today. He's feeling generous today, and what's a cultural festival without an impending trainwreck?

"Matsuoka! Stop sulking at get back to swaying your hips at the customers, will you?"

**——————-**

Yazaki still has her braids, even with the whole Prince get-up she has on.

Haruka isn't sure why he's noticing this, honestly, but it's kind of hard to focus on something else other than Yazaki when she's aiming that toy bowgun towards a bunch of targets that has numbers indicating the presents players might win on them. She's clearly aiming for one of the prizes that says twenty vouchers for the festival food stalls, looking very determined to hit her targets.

Haruka wonders if he should try getting them for her. Not that he's confident of his shooting skills, but he remembers Gou arguing with Nagisa about "being a gentleman" some time last summer, and this is probably one of those instance. Maybe.

Except Yazaki, expression smoothly calm with her laser focus gaze, hits the target on her first try.

"Nanase-kun!" she beams, almost too brightly, and Haruka resists the urge to cover his eyes because god, he could live for this blinding smile. "Isn't it great? We get free food!"

Haruka blinks, turning his stare from Yazaki's smile to the coupons she holds in her hands. "They're yours, though."

Yazaki pauses, looking taken-aback, and Haruka shuts his mouth so fast he's surprised he didn't bite his tongue. His feet scuffle on the floor—the heels knocking against each other, and wishes he could have at least change before taking Yazaki out, but Mikoshiba had decided to hide everyone's clothes before they opened the cafe. Maybe this is karma for not joining in everyone's protest when Mikoshiba laughingly took away their clothes.

"But, um," Yazaki's hands lower, her face taking a hesitant look. "I thought it would be nice to try out the festival food with you, Nanase-kun."

Haruka fights the heat threatening to crawl up his face. He ducks his head instead, and mumbles, "Do you want me to?"

Yazaki smiles her sunflower smile. "Very much."

And honestly, what can he say to that?

**——————-**

Nagisa stops the moment he sees the gathered hemline of Haruka's skirt, hopping on his toes as he rounds a corner into the first floor hallway, quickly side stepping a fashion club member in his saturn costume and slams himself behind a wall.

" _Rei-chan!"_ he whisper-hisses, grabbing his tie when he walks pass, slamming him into the all next to him. Rei nearly blew their cover not even five minutes into their operation, and Nagisa makes sure he  _understands this,_ glaring right at him.

" _What?_ " Rei hisses back, rubbing the back of his head, his hand catching the back hook of his glasses, making the bridge of his frames — carefully sellotaped at least two centimetres thick around by Ai — bounce lightly on his nose.

"You nearly ran into Haru-chan!"

Which in actuality, was a little lie. Haruka had his perky little rump to them, so he wouldn't have seen them anyway. He made a very good call, designing the skirt with a bustle and the bottom slightly gathered,  giving everyone — especially those with broad shoulders — the illusion of a an hour glass figure, the delicate flare of child-bearing hips.

"Where did he go, Nagisa-kun? We have to hurry we might lose him!" The added panic always works in favour of getting Rei fired up, so Nagisa isn't  _too_  guilty.

"The Flamingo has left for bulding Alpha Minor—"

" _We haven't decided code names yet, Nagisa-kun!_ "

" _But more importantly, Rei-chan,_ Haru-chan is sharp." He pulls on Rei's tie again so they could huddle, crouched on the ground. " _Too sharp._ "

"I could do without the dramatics, Nagisa-kun—"

Nagisa gasps, offended. "What monster have you become?"

"But certainly, you have a point. We must have a cohesive plan if we want to spy on Haruka-senpai properly." Rei looks to the ground, brings a hand to curl around his chin and Nagisa could see the big gears in his head turning already.

"Rude, Rei-chan. This isn't spying, it's  _watching over_  Haru-chan." Rei looks at him dubiously, but otherwise doesnt comment. Nagisa claps Rei's back encouragingly. "But that's exactly what I wanted to hear!"

**——————-**

"Haunted house?"

Yazaki makes a face, then tucks back into the paper cup of cookies they had gotten from the basketball club's stall. Haruka mentally crosses the Haunted House from any other activity he'd ever suggest to Yazaki Aki. "Face-painting?"

Yazaki looks thoughtful. "Will you get one as well, Nanase-kun?"

"...no, it'd be trouble if my grandmother finds out."

"Then, I'm alright. I'm not too interested in face-painting, so." She turns a curious look at him. "You live with your grandmother here, right? Do you have siblings?"

The first one that pops up in his mind is, of course, of Makoto and the twins. Technically, they're not what Yazaki is asking, so he supposes there's no need to mention that. "I don't."

Yazaki blinks. "Oh," she says, after about thirty seconds of looking uncertain. She opens her mouth, closes it again, thoughtful, before breaking into a sheepish laugh. "I was so sure you're the oldest child, or something." The curve of her lips crinkle the corners of her eyes, and Haruka cannot look away.

The paper cup in his own hand forgotten, Haruka nearly turns it upside-down when he attempts to scrub his face with the back of his hand. Thankfully, he catches himself before actually doing that, and scrubs his face with the back of his other hand. Calm down, Nanase, he tells himself, takes a breath, and says, "Sometimes it feels like that."

"Like you're the oldest?"

He shrugs. "Makoto has twins siblings. They're very demanding."

Yazaki's laugh tinkles in his ear, like a light wind chime in spring. She reaches out to steal one of the cookies in Haruka's paper cup, and says cheekily before popping it into her mouth, "I bet they do this a lot."

Haruka is so proud that he doesn't crumple the paper cup in his hand.

**——————-**

"The Flamingo has left alpha minor. I repeat, the flamingo has left Alpha Minor. Do you copy, Finch?" Nagisa whispers into his phone, hiding behind the low walls of the corridor connecting to the building annex.

"I copy. Do you have their current positions, Sparrow?" Rei's static filled voice filters into the receiver.

If he recalls correctly, there should only be two routes Haruka could take from here. Left, towards the stairway, or down the hall towards more of the class attractions. Knowing Haruka, he would avoid the second floor where the swim club's cafe is at all cost, but there is also the screening by the movie research club in the a/v room due in five minutes, and that's  _a very date thing to do_ , Nagisa would never forgive Haruka if he doesnt take Yazaki there — which he won't, really — but this isn't about that right now, it's about accurately guessing Haruka's course of actions and Nagisa has about an eighty-percent chance of being right.

"Towards building Alpha, twelve o'clock from your position. You might want to change vantage points. You're easily spotted—" He hears two beeps from his receiver, an incoming call. "Oh wait up, Rei-chan, Rin-chan's calling."

_"Yo bubblebutts, I got off shift."_

"You mean you were deliberately doing a bad job so Mikoshiba-buchou could kick you out to have a break?" Nagisa says sweety, batting his eyelashes.

 _"Shut up."_ Rin says. _"Anyway, brief me on the situation."_

"If you say so, Puffin!" Rin splutters through the receiver at the nickname. "Haru-chan's heading through to the first floor hallway. We need to know where you're at for you to be useful Rin-chan."

_"First of all, Why am I the Puffin?"_

"Because your cute, Rin-chan! But yeah, your position? I'll connect this call to Rei for a three-way, okay?"

_"You must know how that sounds, right?"_

"Nagisa-kun! Where were you?! The flamingo weaved through the crowds and I've lost him around Crossroad Yankee an estimate of seven minutes ago, I've been trying to run to catch up to him but the calligraphy club keeps pulling on my sleeves and forcing me to attend their demo,  _Nagisa-kun—_ "

"Rei-chan, calm down Rei-chan we have reinforcements!"

" _Hi,"_  Rin offers lamely. _"Just so you know I refuse to use codenames."_

"Rin-san, this is a matter of life or death, we would appreciate it if you use the proper terms." Leave it to Rei to always stay lawful and in line even when they've reached desperate situations.

 _"Ugh, fuck you, Ryuugazaki. Fine."'_  A loud heavy sigh, like this is the absolute worst thing that has happened to Rin today and not putting on a bustle butt. _Puffin reporting from the first floor west building."_

"Thank you, Rin-san. Now, Haruka-senpai would probably be in your viscinity considering the hallway he turned to when I lost track of him. I'd expect him to arrive seventy degrees from your right in about—"

_"Oh, hey, what do you know, he's here.''_

"I love you both. We'll all rendezvous there," Nagisa says as he hangs up, rushing towards the west building.

**——————-**

Aki turns a longing glance at the toilet, and then makes a face at the ridiculously long line of girls standing to get in.

She loves being a girl, most of the time. But sometimes she also curses the fact that she's a girl, even if it's mainly because of stupid inconvenient reasons. Like period. Or puberty. Or the fact that girls' toilets usually have more occupants than the boys'. Her mother says it's a teenager thing, having thoughts like these, but Aki likes to think she's mature enough to have opinions, and therefore she stands by it.

Besides, periods really do suck.

"The one in the library might not have a line," Nanase says, throwing a glance at the other building adjacent to the one they're currently in. He throws her a tentative look, like he isn't sure of his own suggestion, and then adds rather meekly, "Do you want me to show you where it is?"

"Oh," that sounds like a good idea, except it would take some time to get to the school library building, and Nanase has so little free time what with his maid cafe that's still going on. "Um. I kind of still want to look around with you...?"

Nanase averts his eyes. Aki catches his fingers worrying the edge of his maid uniform, and wonders if he's uncomfortable for having to walk around while still wearing it. "We... could take the other way to the back?"

Aki perks up. "Is it faster?"

Nanase gives a slight nod. "There are also some stalls on the way—the Cultural Study Club is doing divination, we'll be passing their stall."

"That sounds interesting. Do you like divinations, Nanase-kun?"

"....not at all...?"

"Hmmm...."

**——————-**

"Fuck, Haru is _really_ good at crowd-dodging."

"Evidence proves that it's just that you're terrible at walking in heels, Rin-san."

"Shut up, not everyone is Haru— wait you guys are in your uniforms."

"We borrowed spares from the infirmary." Another lie, but Nagisa feels like he has Mikoshiba's trust riding on his shoulders. They've always had a secret kinship. "We thought it'd be obvious if we ran around in our maid outfits."

"Why didn't you tell me?! I should go change, I can't _move_  in this—"

"Taking a detour would be detrimental to this mission."

"Your _face_ is detrimental to this mission." Rin is five years old.  _One of us, one of us, one of us._

"Now, now, don't be mean Rin-chan— I THINK I SEE HARU-CHAN HE'S BACKTRACKING TO THE GENERAL DIRECTION OF THE LIBRARY."

Rin is the first to move, a true Mrs. Smith the way he suddenly gains the ability to work those heels, sprinting forwards and jumping clear over a few first years' heads, using their shoulders for the extra lift. Nagisa is rendered frozen, and Rei following right after, a pair of petrified statues in the middle of a colourful festival.

Nagisa grabs the first thing within reach — Rei's sleeves — and tries to ground himself, take a moment or two to process what just happeend.

"Rei-chan?" He asks, almost distractedly.

"Yes, Nagisa-kun?" Serene. Nagisa completely understands.

"Rin-chan is _awesome._ "

"Yes, Nagisa-kun. Rin-san is awesome."

**——————-**

They try their hardest to keep up with Rin, running into a poor soul every three or so steps while the mass of frills that is Rin always seems at least halfway across the hall no mater how fast they run.

" _Last sighted, twenty point ten seconds, one-twenty-seven._ " Rin shouts into his phone. Nagisa fumbles with his phone, nearly drops it when he accidentally slams his arm against a corner wall. "NAGISA! Get stationed! Ten-fifty!"

"REI-CHAN WHAT IS HE TALKING ABOUT? I'M LOST? I'M GOING AROUND IN CIRCLES AND I'M DIZZY AND I CAN'T SEE HARU-CHAN OR YAZAKI-SAN ANYWHERE?" Rin says that he should be somewhere near them. Or at least, that's what he's trying to say. Who understands what comes out of Rin's mouth lately, anyway?

"I-I  _think_  those are position times as usual, Nagisa-kun? Rin-san is just incredibly...  _precise._ " They've lost Rei, like, three hallways ago, he isn't much use now. He's the only one who understands Rin-speak, too. Nagisa wants to cry.

 _"What's the difference between ten-fifty and eleven, though?!"_ His feet hurts, Rin is too angry, he almost wishes he was back in the cafe, flipping Ai's skirt.

" _It's not the same, Nagisa!_ " Rin growls. Nagisa hears crashing and some distant cursing and wonders if Rin just threw someone out a window to make clear path. "Now hurry before we really cant find him! Assuming he disappeared towards the back, go eight-fifty from the stairways."

"Rin-chan you're not making any sense!" At this point Nagisa is just following his heart, following anything that might get him somewhere, because he's pretty sure he's not in the same school any more. That wall is definitely not one he's ever seen in Iwasame.

" _Stairways Delta!_ " The answer to the question he never asked. Rin says it is like _Nagisa_ is the one being unreasonable.

"Go to the stairs to the right from the main entrance, _god,_  why is everyone in this squad so  _slow?!_ "

Well, Rin is about to think they've reached turtle levels because Nagisa just went far out the opposite way.

**——————-**

From the windows of the classroom their swimming club uses to hold the maid cafe, Sousuke squints to focus at the two familiar figure walking out of the library building across the track field. His eyes track back the direction they came from, eyebrows tauting when he realizes none of the supposedly 'tailing squad' is around their target.

Clearly even with Rin's help, Ryuugazaki and Hazuki are incompetent at being spies.

"Oi, Makoto," he calls out, who's serving two pairs of giggling middle school girls trying to poke his biceps and causing him to blush. Makoto, looking incredibly grateful for being saved, hurries to his side as Sousuke gestures outside with a flick of his head. "Seems they lost him."

Makoto squints, looking confused. "Who are you looking at?"

Sousuke sighs. "Do you not recognize your own best friend from across the track field?"

"....I don't have superhuman powers like you do, Sousuke," Makoto complains, which is irrelevant, because this isn't even about superpowers. Sousuke is just that good, and he thinks he needs more friends who could appreciate that.

"Regardless," Sousuke says, glances at Mikoshiba to make sure he is still preoccupied with his so-called younger brother, who had just bounced in five minutes ago into the cafe. The similarity between them is unnerving. "We're gonna have to send you out. I'll cover for you."

The good thing about Tachibana Makoto is that when he knows he has to do something, he's going to do it with everything in his power. And Sousuke knows he will, what with the way his eyes harden with determination, and the firm nod he gets as an answer.

"I understand."

"Go." Sousuke orders, and Makoto turns around to stride towards the make-shift pantry, presumably to chuck his tray away and change into a more reasonable footwear for the mission. Throwing another glance towards the two figure getting closer to where the festival crowds are, he fishes out his phone and dials Rin's number.

_"I can't fucking talk now, Sousuke, Nagisa lost them completely and now we're—"_

"Target sighted." Sousuke says curtly. "Sending the Giant Orca. Approximately sixty-eight degrees from our cafe's windows, out of the library building towards the main stage area."

There's a pause from the other side of the phone, and then a grumble. _"It's not_ target _, it's_ flamingo _."_

He should probably pull Ryuugazaki aside and talk about him about his naming sense. Or codename sense. "Whatever. Get your shits together and rendezvous with Giant Orca in five minutes or we'll lose them completely."

 _"Roger that,"_ is the begrudging afffirmation, and the line is cut. Sousuke glances back towards the pantry, sees the shadow of Makoto ready to proceed, and takes a breath before purposefully dropping the pitcher of cold water in his hand.

The shattering noise of the glass hitting the floor is enough to get him a bellow from the club Captain, but Sousuke doesn't much care, because from the corner of his eyes, he could see Makoto darting out of the classroom successfully, the tail of his skirt ribbons flapping behind him before disappearing from his line of sight.

Everything is out of his hands, now.

**——————-**

"Hey, Nanase-kun."

He takes a breath. Long, calm breath. "Yes, Yazaki?"

"Is it just me, or—" she glances back, making an amused noise at the back of her throat. "—have I been seeing your friends everywhere we turn?"

He's been dreading the question. He'd wished Yazaki wouldn't notice, but of course she would—she's smart, and his friends, unfortunately, are not. Or so it is, apparently.

"Ignore them," is his helpless answer, because Haruka isn't sure what else he could say at this point. "They're probably collecting blackmail materials."

Yazaki giggles, and then, bless her pure soul, says, "Aw, I'm sure they won't be doing anything bad to you."

Haruka looks up to the sky, and wishes it was true.

**——————-**

Mid-November brings about long days of rain, somber and grey as the last of red-orange-yellow autumn leaves are shaken down from the trees by the chilly wind. From Haruka's balcony, the umbrellas of people passing as they walk through the park looks like coloured mushrooms, rolling right and left under droplets of rain, the only specks of colour that doesn't even brighten the day.

Shitty weather, Rin had grumbled when Haruka bumped into him on the stairs after dinner, looking like he's about to murder someone because his bedsheets wouldn't dry. A sheepish-looking Makoto had followed him up the stairs, guilt written all over his face, and Haruka thinks he shouldn't ask.

"Ooooh, Nanase!" the familiar voice that booms over the stairs railings from the fourth floor as Haruka steps up to the third floor is the only late warning of a Mikoshiba Seijuurou's presence. Haruka groans inwardly, not wishing to be involved in whatever craziness his dormhead and club captain is cooking this time, but not wanting to tempt any consequence Mikoshiba might give him if he runs away this very second. Slowly, he backs down two steps, in order to look up to where Mikoshiba is waving at him from the fourth floor landings.

"Buchou," he acknowledges, and Mikoshiba grins.

"I'm gonna drop three books from up here. Catch them and bring them to Yamazaki, okay?"

And before Haruka could even agree, a full Japanese-English dictionary bigger than the size of his head drops down in a neckbreaking speed, hitting the wooden floor behind him with a deafening slam that sends Haruka jolting up two centimeters.

Mikoshiba barks out an amused laugh. "Catch it, Nanase, don't let it break the floor."

"I'd like to live," Haruka tells him, and winces as the second book—an encyclopedia, this time, hits the floor. "Buchou—"

"Eh, as long as you get them to Yamazaki." The last book misses Haruka's shoulder by an inch, slamming onto the floor right next to his foot, and Haruka swallows a curse. He bends down anyway to collect them, managing to sneak a glare at the still grinning Mikoshiba. "I'll leave it to you then, Nanase!"

Yamazaki'd better appreciate this—these books are fucking heavy. He heaves them up into his arms, making sure he won't accidentally drop them on his foot and ended up losing a toe or something, and begins walking up just when Mikoshiba calls again. "And oh, Nanase?"

Haruka pauses, turning suspicious look up at Mikoshiba who leans down from the railings.

"I'm not supposed to tell you, this, but—" the redhead drops his voice, like he's telling a secret. "About Yazaki Aki? She's leaving to America."

Something in Haruka's stomach drops.

"What?"

Mikoshiba levels him a pitying look. "Gou told me earlier.  Her train to Tokyo leaves in two hours."

**——————-**

Rei unrolls a sheet of B2 graph paper across the floor with a harsh sweep of his hand. Shadows cast over graphs and spider diagrams as everyone huddles around, obstructing the bright overhead lighting of the common room. At the head of the table, all eyes on him, Rei pushes his glasses up with one hand, projecting an air of grave urgency.

"I apologise that I have taken over Yamazaki-san's main strategist position in this operation." A shared nod of understanding. "But I feel that the sheer gravity of this matter asks for someone with more  _experience_. The Final Frontier is finally upon us."

" _Hey_ , that's not why I agreed to this, Ryuugazaki."

"In the time Haruka-senpai spent in panic—" Rei chooses to pointedly ignore him. "—About fifteen minutes or so, I'm so sorry Haruka-senpai — I have constructed a mock up of sorts as to how we'll get Haruka-senpai to the station in time to see Yazaki-san."

It's a stretch, but if everything falls through, Haruka would have just enough time to see her off. Rei poured his heart and soul into this plan, he has a feeling that it would work well. He needs each and everyone of the people gathered in this room (and probably half the dorm as well) and their full cooperation.

"As you know, it is currently—" He flits his eyes over the heads of his peers, to the wall clock above the door. "Eight-thirty-three PM, well past the time that we're allowed to freely go out of the dorm quarters."

Nagisa interrupts him with a raise of his his hand.

"Yes, Nagisa-kun?"

"Don't we have Mikoshiba-buchou on our side? He gets away with sneaking Gou-chan in, can't we make him do his magic and sneak us out?"

"How naive you are, Nagisa-kun. Mikoshiba-buchou had only told us about Yazaki-san's departure, it's hardly an open invitation for his help."

"This is a whole lot more fun too!" Rin helpfully adds from somewhere behind the wall of dorm inhabitants. He wasn't fast enough when Rei had called for the gathering and ended up being shoved to the back. Distance never could quite hold his entire presence back, though, so Rin is very much part of the meeting even if he has to shove and shout.

Not that he doesn't shove and shout if he  _were_  in the front rows. There's not much difference either way.

"Thank you for your input Rin-san, but yes, this is an opportunity we can't afford to lose." Slapping the paper twice, Rei reminds everyone of their main objective. "We need to help Haruka-senpai! While asking Mikoshiba-buchou would be infinitely simpler, it rides on the chance that he agrees. In the time that we seek him out and bring this whole ordeal to him, I've estimated that we'll lose  _twenty minutes_  of our precious time!  _More if he refuses!_ "

"What do you suggest then, Rei?" Makoto asks.

"If we finish this plan that I've put together, my calculations tell me that we'll actually save  _at least five minutes_  than if we ask Mikoshiba-buchou for help."

The room bursts with astonished murmurs, everyone whispering amongst themselves with this development.

"Alright then, Rei." Sousuke nods, a few people behind him doing the same, their eyes burning bright with determination. "We trust you."

Nagisa jumps up from his seat, looks around at everyone with a large open-mouthed smile and a spark of excitement that he barely manages to contain, a point zero something of voltage away from visibly vibrating.

He takes a breath, a big show of inhaling loudly and puffing out his chest — Rei is too caught up in the atmosphere to tell him that 'y _ou take air in with your diaphragm, Nagisa-kun. Expand your stomach, not your chest' —_ keeping the air in his cheeks for a few seconds before punching the air "For Haru-chan!" he shouts.

" _Iwasame, go!_ " The room, and maybe even the whole building, rumbles with the voice of a hundred young men, ready to jump into battle in the name of love.

**——————-**

"First things's first — we need a way to get out of the building. I have pin pointed the exact areas of each dorm keeper at the time of the operation, but..." Rei trails off, pouts as he crosses his arms across his chest, looking down to floor map he drew to an eighty percent precision along with being accurately scaled on the middle of the paper. "They're all too far apart for us to effectively distract all of them at once."

"Don't we need to just distract the one by the door?" Rin asks. "I mean that's where we're going."

"It won't work. The one currently on guard is Satou-san. He will call in  reinforcements before he even thinks about leaving his post. Distracting him while he's there is useless too, he will see us try to sneak Nanase out however the fuck we'll do it," Sousuke says.

"You seem to know a lot about this, Sousuke..." Truth to be told, Rei somewhat agrees with Rin. Sousuke's vast knowledge of anything and anyone in relation to security is mildly concerning.

Sousuke shrugs, non-committal, suspiciousness rising in rapid movements. "You guys can leave the matter of unlocking the dorm gates to me."

The fact that nobody questions this probably means everyone believes that Yamazaki Sousuke somehow has superpowers—after the whole ordeal with the paper cup phone plan, and the information he had just let out, Rei supposes it's only normal. That doesn't answer the question of how exactly Sousuke would do it, or why he could do it, though.

They would have to leave it for another day, though. Haruka is the priority today, after all. And the information Sousuke gives proves to be useful,  _so._ "We'll leave it to you, Sousuke-senpai."

The corner of Sousuke's mouth lifts up in a terrifying smirk.

Rei shakes his head, schools himself back to game plan master. "We need to do something large enough to summon all dormkeepers to one place, then..."

"Oh, oh! I have an idea! I've always wanted to flood the laundry room at least  _once_  in my highschool career!"

"I'm... not going to ask why you even have such aspirations, Nagisa-kun. But that might work, yes, thank you. I'll think about how to make it more impactful later." Scribbling a few notes down onto the paper, Rei then taps the back of his pencil to his lips. _Flood the toilets too, maybe,_  he writes in smaller text. He nods, once, twice, looks over the flowchart with a critical eye and looks up to meet the keen gazes of his troops.

"So." He pauses for effect. "Who here has a snake."

The answer comes in the form of one Nakagawa Shouta, raising a meek hand at the very back of the common room.

Rei smirks, his intuition prevailing all claims of hallucination from Nagisa when he once said (without a shrill of hysteria and endless tears streaming down his face, mind you) he had saw a snake in the wash basin in the second floor bathroom. He will have to shove that in Nagisa's face later when they're all done because he feels like he very much deserves the right to be five years old and say  _'I told you so'_.

It feels so,  _so_  good when things go his way.

For once in his life.

Ryuugazaki one, Hazuki a few tens of thousands.

**——————-**

It feels like an eternity, or three, when they've stationed themselves behind the wall next to the common room door. It couldn't have been more than fifteen minutes of volleying ideas and perfecting their strategy, but Rei could feel his eye bags grow sentinent and his brain spinning away to the depths of space. He checks the clock, having synchronized everyone's wrist watches to it earlier — time is of the essence, the very threads holding this plan together. The needle ticks, seconds passing by, the final moments of calm before their man-made storm—  _three... two..._

" _One!_ GO, MEN! GO, GO, GO!" He shouts, frantically waving his hands in the midst of the chaos of a whole platoon of teenage school boys storming into position.

Haruka is the last to leave, standing still mid-step just before he passes, looks at Rei behind a blur of limbs and loungewear rushing past. His eyes are glassy, hair sticking every which way mirroring the whirlwind of emotions passing through his face right now, caught in between confusion and excitement. He's breathing heavily, irregular, harsh huffs slipping between parted lips. Rei looks back, fond, urges him with a gentle whisper of encouragement.

"Go, Haruka-senpai. Good luck."

Haruka nods in reply, a stutter in his movement before he takes a step forward, into the hallway, into the surrounding echo of pattering footsteps.

"Thank you, Rei."

**——————-**

The laundry room isn't exactly deserted at this hour, but the good thing about having Nagisa on their side is that no one in their dorm could actually say no to his cute face, and Nagisa isn't shy on using the power that comes from such privilege.

"How many of you are using the washing machines?" Nagisa sing-songs as he slams the door to the laundry room open. On the corner of the room, Nitori drops his basket of laundry in surprise, and the five other guys in the room turn to them curiously. Rei strolls in after Nagisa, critical eyes sweeping the whole room.

"What's going on?" Nitori begins, and Nagisa grins at him, clapping his hands thrice.

"Alright, four out of seven washing machines running, that's not bad. Let's get all of your laundry out of the machines, chop-chop!!"

One of the guys using the washing machine makes an indignant noise, and that's as far as he could get before Nagisa zooms at him, blond tuft bouncing as he beams up at the guy up close, and says, "Help us pull out the machines' hoses!"

"What—" and there is no other responses that could go past Nagisa, at this point, because he's bodily pulling and pushing at everyone in the room to move, move, come on move it we don't have much time! Rei darts over to one of the machines, snagging the hose connecting the machine and the water tank and pulls on it with all his might.

Water floods the room in huge blobs, and Nagisa jumps to switch on the water tank so that it's getting more water and not drained completely. Nitori yelps, holding his basket of laundry over his head, as another guy tries stuffing his still-wet laundry into another basket, and another one yells at Rei, "Why are we doing this?!"

Nagisa puts his foot on the floor with an air of authority, splashing water everywhere as it pools around their ankles. "To help Haru-chan and his quest of love!"

There's a moment of silence in which Rei could hear all of them comes to an understanding.

Then they're all stuffing laundry into baskets and hopping up at cabinets to put them in safer place. More hoses are pulled, more water floods, and when the water reaches their calves, Nitori turns on the washing machines still connected with the hoses and pour detergent into empty machines, and not even one minute later, bubbles and suds are bubbling up and overflowing into the floor.

"Ai-chan!" Nagisa shouts, sounding  _in love_ , and he jumps forward to glomp Nitori and kisses him straight on the mouth.

Rei splutters. Nitori makes a sound like he's dying.

"That was genius!" Nagisa exclaims as he lets Nitori go, but not before squeezing him half to death. Then he shoots out towards the door, pausing only to hug Rei like he's the only person in the room who has Iwasame bread in his hands, and says, "It's okay, Rei-chan, I still love you the best!"

And off he goes, slamming the door open and sending water flooding out the hallways in his wake as he runs down and screams for the dorm keepers about flood emergency.

**——————-**

Water is pooling around his ankles, overflowing down the stairs and onto the first floor, which has also been flooded with a mix of water and suds, and Haruka could hear the commotion in the laundry room as the dorm ladies begin shouting at the boys, splashing water everywhere as they bustle about trying to stop the flood.

Somewhere from the above floors, someone is shouting about broken toilets and water taps, and Haruka has to step aside when one of the dorm ladies running up the stairs with a mop in hand, a frustrated look on her face. He hears her terrified shriek from somewhere in the distant land of the top of the staircase followed by rapid footsteps and the sound of something swishing across shallow puddle of water.  _Ah,_  that would be the snake, then. Haruka can't find it in him to feel guilty, not now, when Nagisa shoots down the hallway yelling to get the dorm keepers' attention, winking at him as he passes.

"Good luck, Haru-chan!"

He wants nothing but to run through the main entrance and out in the night towards the station. They have so little time, and despite knowing that Rei had calculated their time down to the exact second, a tiny voice in the back corner of his heart voices out uncertainty, will he make it?

He wants to run out. The faster he could run out, the better.

Rei catches his eyes from the door to the laundry room, and gives him a thumb up.

Haruka straightens his shoulders, and tells himself,  _hold on._

Hold on.

They'll get him out.

**——————-**

He never thought these firecrackers are going to come in handy.

Makoto reaches out to tap his wrist, and Rin turns to him to meet determined green eyes. There's the slightest crease around Makoto's eyebrows, the only sign of how worried he is about this whole operation, despite all of them being determined to carry this to the end. "Be very careful, Rin."

Rin would have snorted at him, usually. Or at least elbowed him lightly, because who does Makoto think he is? But this is a grave situation, this is where they absolutely cannot fail, and Rin holds Makoto's gaze, lays his palm atop Makoto's own, and leans in for a kiss.

"We can do this," he says, in a tone that broke no argument, and Makoto, eyes tight and equally tensed, nods.

Rin takes a deep breath and looks up to the sky just as a flare goes up from the roof of their dorm, lighting the ground in red and gold with a muffled echo of an explosion in the sky.

There it is. Their signal. Kisumi and his bunch of first year kouhai in the basketball club had carried his job to completion. Rin expected no less.

His palm meets Makoto in a light high-five. "I'll meet you at the entrance!" Rin yells, and doesn't wait to watch Makoto shoots up to his feet and runs down the other way. They don't have a lot of time—they have to cause enough ruckuss to distract all the dorm security patrol, and their numbers of firecrackers are limited, but fuck if Rin isn't going to make them count.

He skids to a stop at the first shadow of the security guard running towards the dorm, having drawn by Kisumi's fire flare, sticks a firecracker onto the ground and lights it up. It explodes with a deafening crack, the fire arching up beautifully before making another crack in the air, and Rin pushes himself to run faster, leaving behind the shouts of the guard, only turning around to light up another fire cracker and throws it in random direction as he runs. Somewhere on the other side of the dorm, five consecutive firecrackers' explosions echo in the dead quiet of the night, and Rin smirks. Makoto, Asahi and Ikuya must have gotten to work as well. If they keep this up, Haruka could sneak out and get to the main gate without difficulties. 

"You there, stop!" someone roars, flashlight shooting right towards Rin's line of sight, and Rin gives up his momentum to drop himself on the ground, ignoring the rocks digging into his arms and cheeks as he slides a lit firecracker towards the guard, and winces when it explodes, followed by an enraged shout and curses.

He hopes nobody would accidentally hurt anyone.

 _Meet you at the entrance_ , he remembers, and Rin pushes himself back onto his feet with a heave, and fights the strong night wind as he runs through.

**——————-**

When the sixteenth explosion echoes outside, the clock strikes nine.

"Haruka-senpai!" Rei shouts at him in an ordering tone, and Haruka propels himself forward, finally following the urge to break into a run. He slams the dorm entrance open and lets it slam back close behind him, not pausing even as three consecutive firecrackle explosions break through the air, and another fire flare whistles up before it lights up the ground.

He nearly loses his balance as he starts running down the downhill path towards the gate, almost succumbing to the gravity if it isn't for his hand dropping to support his upper body and push him back up and regain his balance. Another explosion, a loud curse clearly aimed at teenagers, and Haruka catches the shadow of Makoto's figure on from the corner of his eyes, tumbling down with a security guard on his heels.

His breath catches in his throat. "Makoto!"

Their eyes meet, a split-second of horror on Haruka's part, and stubbornness in Makoto's.  _Don't stop_ , they say, boring hard into Haruka's own.  _Go, Haru-chan, go!!_

And then something—no, not something, someone's hand—seizes Haruka's shoulder and pushes him forward, sending him nearly tumbling onto the ground, and Haruka has a second to catch his balance before looking up into Rin's fiery gaze.

"Just go!" he shouts, arms opening wide as he gestures towards the gate. "Leave Makoto to me, there's a save point at the gate, I swear—"

He can't not protest, especially because what the fuck does Rin mean, a  _save point_?! "But—!"

" _Just fucking go, Haru!_ "

With that, Rin lights up the last firecracker in his hand, aiming it just to the side towards where the guard is about to catch up with Makoto, runs forward with all his might and shouts, "Makoto, get down!"

Haruka's throat tightens, something in his chest bubbling up, and he physically tears himself away to not look at the bright light of the firecracker, to ignore the long whistle before the echo of explosion, and pushes himself to run off.

The gate.

He just needs to get to the gate.

**——————-**

" _Yamazaki?"_ Haruka nearly stumbles when he stops, eyes blown wide, bewildered because Rei didn't mention a  _bike._

Yamazaki throws him a helmet and clasps the fasterner under his chin. Haruka is still having trouble processing all of this because  _what?_ About a million questions runs through his mind, a hundred thousand miles a minute along with his heartrate in rapid fire.  _Yamazaki was out here before all them, Yamazaki had time to find a bike, Yamazaki had—_

Broken the lock. Just as the plan called for.

"We don't have time. Hop on, Nanase!" A turn of the handle and the engine roars, headlight wavering across the asphalt from the sudden intensity.

"Rei said— Did you _steal— Do you even have a license?!"_ The more time he spends here and  _not moving forward_  is less time for him to catch Yazaki before her train. Haruka is convinced that at this point, he has already fucked up the timeframe Rei had set for everything. Panic starts crawling up his chest, curling around his throat, clutching all around him so tightly that he struggles to breathe — choked, jaws clenched— 

_He's not going to—_

" _Nanase!_ " Yamazaki's voice feels like a shock of cold water, and Haruka snaps his head back up, locks eyes with Yamazaki's behind his helmet's visor. "You're definitely not going to make it if you just stand there!"

He nods, firm, eyebrows furrowed with determination. Securing the helmet over his head, Haruka swings his leg to take a seat behind Yamazaki, gripping the back of his jacket until knuckles turn white.

"I'm counting on you," he whispers to the back of his hand, to the leather of Yamazaki's jacket.

"Yeah." Yamazaki's voice is soft, the softest Haruka has ever heard it. With a kick of his boot to the ground, they set off, a sharp u-turn that sends flutters down his stomach before the swoop that came with zooming at top speed downhill. "Besides, who knows when you'll reach the station, knowing how slow you are."

The only reason Haruka doesn't kick him is because they're on a moving bike and Haruka is deadly scared enough without the added risk of an accident.

**——————-**

" _Shit!"_ Yamazaki skids across the asphalt at such an angle that Haruka thinks that they might have been parallel with the road at some point. Maybe if he pretends the slight burn on his left sleeve is from muscle burn instead, he would have more chance of finding peace in his mind.

Haruka looks up the street as Yamazaki kicks the bike upright, notes the streetlamp with one light off and then tries to look forwards, over Yamazaki's mile-wide shoulders. The streetlamp was where Yamazaki had first slammed the breaks, now the toe of Yamazaki's boots might as well be touching the stray rubble from the mountain of a landslide in front of them. It could very well be a five metre distance, which isn't nothing. Not even  _close_  to being nothing. Haruka has to take a moment to breathe as dust settles around them, fluttering back down after a wild disturbance that was Yamazaki.

Of course Yamazaki is a drift racer on top of being everything else under the goddamn sun.  _Of course._

"Why doesn't anybody watches the news in our dorm?!" Yamazaki shouts, jamming the horn in frustration. Haruka could see that he's so close to smacking the side mirrors clear off the bike, and that it physically pains him to restrain himself because _it's a stolen bike, it's a stolen bike, I have to give it back in one piece._ "This wouldn't have fucking happened if someone told us about this shit!" A few more angry honks blaring across the night. Sure, let's add public disturbance to the ever growing list of rules the entire Iwasame Boys' High School student body contributed into breaking. It's not like one more is going to do much more harm.

Yamazaki whips his head back, looks at Haruka with a steely glare.

"You have to go, Nanase."

"What?" They've gone this far already, and Yamazaki's right, if Haruka ran there's a chance that he'll be  _too late—_

" _Use your desperation move!"_

But apparently everyone still has time to use video game analogies.

So he smiles, hops off the back of the bike and throws the helmet to hang over one of the handles. He shoots one last look behind him, hopes that his expression tells Yamazaki— _Sousuke_ — what he needs to know: that his efforts aren't going to go to waste, that he will see this through until the end.

"I'll be going now, Sousuke."

"You better come back, Haru."

He laughs. It's really starting to feel like a boss battle — the final stretch before the end, parting words between the hero and the last of his party members before stepping in alone.

**——————-**

The universe, however, suddenly decides that, _hey, we should fuck up that Nanase kid some more, eh?_ Because whatever put a plug on the sky earlier had fucked right off and starts to lovingly bestow upon Haru's presence, a downpour of rain. He could follow Sousuke's example and ask to the dark clouds why none of their friends watches the weather forecast, but it was his own fault that he didn't think that it would start raining again. Rei isn't a Japanese first-year highschooler version of Miss Cleo. He can't predict the weather in addition to planning every single second that led him here in the first place.

He runs, keeps running as his hoodie slowly gets soaked through, little stains of discolouration on his shoulders bleeding down his arm and across his back.

A little rain isn't going to stop him. He knows the water well. The water will hurt him if he forces himself through it, but rain water is particularly forgiving. It'll let him run through the drizzle, full speed ahead even as he slips on a puddle and even as his breaths comes out in heavy pants. Rain water will allow him that much at least, before cursing him with a cold for the next week, but that's one consequence he'll readily take.

He stops when he sees the station lights in the distance, hands on his knees and his hair sticking to his face.

_Just a little more—_

His knees wobble, on his next step.

He can't feel his feet.

He thinks he might cry.

**——————-**

" _Yo, Nii-chan!_ " Someone shouts from the side of the road.

Haruka whips his head towards the source of he voice, to see a young boy taking shelter from the rain, light from the streetlamp falling right over his head despite everything else around him being dark. An NPC if he ever saw one.

"You look like you're doing something important!" The boy's bright cheeky grin and loud orange hair strongly reminds Haruka of someone. It's beyond his capacities to think of  _who exactly_  right now, though, so he'll save that thought for another time. Who knows, it might just be a coincidence. "Do you need to get somewhere quick?"

Haruka nods, doesn't trust his voice to come out as anything other than a cough of air.

"I can lend you my bike? It'll get you there faster! Less tiring too!"

His eyes brighten. Small miracles, life's little gifts, Rin would say. His expression falls quickly, when he realises that there would be one problem.

"Don't worry about it! Just park it at the station when you're done, I'll pick it up tomorrow."

He rushes over to the sidewalk, takes the boy's hand in his and bows in thanks. He takes the bike by the handles, runs along its side for a few metres down the road, uses the pedal as a pivot when he leaps to sit on the saddle, continuing to pedal furiously.

_He's going to make it._

_He'll definitely make it!_

**——————-**

The moment he throws the bike down at the parking space is the moment he curses his life choices. His thigh burns and as much as he hates to admit it, Sousuke is right. He needs to do more land exercises. It would definitely help the next time he's on a grand quest.

He hopes that it would never come to that. This is once too many as it is.

His thigh burns and the road is wet and he probably just narrowly avoided slipping on the stairs and cracking his head open, like, twice on his way to find the platform Yazaki is supposed to be on. Her train leaves in a few minutes, and his world is spinning — crowds blurring together, overhead signs blindingly bright. He hears ringing in his ears, white noise filtering in under the loud drumming of his heart beat.

"Where...?" The station feels overwhelmingly large right now, maze-like, almost. People bumping into him, narrowing his line of sight. " _Where?!_ "

He doesn't think when he runs into the gates, looks around in panic when the station master asks him what's wrong. He doesn't know how he got through, finds himself on the platform frantically  _searching—_

Haruka's breath catches, at the sight of a white muffler, short brown hair and a little braid. He wants to laugh, when his first attempt at calling out to her results in a small squeak, a wheeze of breath that he barely even hears himself.

He tries again, just as the train arrives, pours everything he has into his voice, a burst of air around her name.

" _Yazaki!_ "

She stumbles backwards, apologises with a bow to the old lady she bumped into before looking around. Haruka shouts again, eyes screwed shut and fists balled tight.

" _Yazaki, don't go!_ "

She finally finds him, by the stairway, behind a thin crowd of people. Her eyes widen, and she slaps her face twice, pinches her cheeks once, looks back towards Haruka in disbelief.

"Nanase-kun?!"

Haruka stumbles, nearly bumps into a middle school girl walking straight ahead with her eyes fixed on her phone, and doesn't bother to apologize. He closes the distance between him and Yazaki in five long strides, still trying to catch his breath, and Yazaki looks at him in concern.

"Nanase-kun, are you okay?"

Haruka shakes his head, holding up a hand to tell her to wait, swallows with a dry throat and feels his heart leaping from his chest. He'd made it. He'd made it. He gets to see her. With that in mind, he rounds up his courage, and looks up to hold Yazaki's gaze.

"Yazaki, you can't go."

Yazaki blinks. Once. Twice. Thrice.

"Um?"

Haruka's eyes slides sideways, to the small suitcase standing by her side, to the handbag she'd rested on it. America, he thinks, so far away. Will they ever meet again, if he let her go now?

"I haven't—" the words caught in his throat, Haruka shakes his head, feeling like he could  _hear_  every beat of his heart, echoing up to the top of his head. "I haven't—made you croquettes yet."

Very good, Nanase, that's very eloquent. Yazaki looks confused.

He tries again. "I can't send you croquettes all the way to America!"

For a moment, silence descends between them.

The speaker over their heads blares another announcement for a train coming into platform three, and a group of teenagers rush up the stairs past them like the devil is hot on their heels. Yazaki, though, doesn't move. She just stares at Haruka, clearly not on the same page as he is, yet, until slowly, slowly, her head tilts sideways in a questioning manner.

"Why would you need to send me croquettes to America?"

"Because..." Haruka hesitates, the confusion in Yazaki's eyes taking him aback. "That's where you're going...?"

Yazaki's eyebrows taut, clearly not understanding a word Haruka is saying.

"I'm just going back home to Tokyo for the weekend."

This time, it's Haruka's turn to blink in confusion.

"...huh..?"

**——————-**

In front of his window in the boys dorm, Seijuurou stands, his boisterous laughter echoing out in the night autumn breeze.

"Gahahahahah!! Isn't this a good bonding activity for the whole dorm?!"

**——————-**

Haruka swears he can hear Mikoshiba's howling laughter in the wind.

Yazaki looks even more confused.

"But Mikoshiba-buchou said—" Haruka starts, pauses, shakes his head, and tries again. "I mean. You. America?"

"I'm just returning to Tokyo for a while?"

"But he said—" and the realization hits him, then, really hits him: Yazaki isn't going to America. Yazaki is returning to Tokyo to visit her parents for a while. Yazaki is still going to be in Iwasame Girls High School until graduation day. Yazaki is still going to live in the room across Haruka's window. Mikoshiba Seijuurou played him. "—you know what—bye, never mind—I hope you have fun, I'll see you when you come back—"

He would have just run right then and there, except this time a hand much smaller than his catches his sleeve and pulls him back sharply. "Nanase-kun, wait!"

He does.

"You came all the way here for me, right?" the fingers tangled in his sleeve slackens for a moment; the slightest of hesitation and uncertainty that makes Haruka wants to turn around and look at Yazaki, just to see what kind of face she is making, now. "Did you... want to say something?"

 _I don't_ , Haruka thinks, and considers jumping into the sewers because he's pretty sure he has never been so embarrassed in his life. He's also pretty sure that his face is aflame right now, if the heat that's been burning the back of his ears and his cheeks is any indication. Maybe he should just make up a lie. Say something—anything—neutral enough to make Yazaki think it's nothing. Or perhaps he could just play dead for fifteen minutes.

He raises his eyes to gauge Yazaki's expression, and pauses when he sees the hopeful look in her face.

Like she's waiting. For something. From Haruka.

He doesn't know what to say—he never knows what to say, when it comes to things like this. Maybe Rin and Sousuke are right: he hasn't unlocked that level yet. But he remembers the flooded laundry room and Rei's fogged-up glasses, remembers Nagisa yelling in the hallway, remembers Makoto and Rin and the school security, remembers Sousuke and the bike, remembers pedaling all the way down to the station under the rain, and thinks,  _it would be unfair to everyone._

It would, if he doesn't say anything at this moment.

So he squares his shoulders, gently pries Yazaki's fingers from his sleeve and faces her, holds her gaze the way he never dares to do before, and very, very quietly, says the words.

"I like you."

And Yazaki—Yazaki blinks, slowly at first and then rapidly, like she doesn't believe what she hears. Haruka watches in awe as a deep shade of red makes its way from base of her neck to her jaws, crawling up her cheeks and reaching up to the tips of her ears, and she raises both of her gloved hands to cover the lower half of her face. Her eyes crinkle, like she isn't sure whether she should laugh or cry, and then she goes, "Awawawa—"

Haruka swallows. Considers jumping in the sewers for real. Then Yazaki shakes her head furiously, all wide-eyed as she stares back at him, and she leans forward, hands reaching out, fingers catching Haruka's own in one smooth motion. "Nanase-kun!"

She's blushing, Haruka thinks, mind whirling, and mentally wonders if it's possible for him to flush even redder as Yazaki squeezes his fingers. "Y-yes?"

Her eyes slide sideways for a second, her lips thinning, and then she's closing her eyes, taking a deep breath, and looks back into Haruka's eyes, all determination and confidence—

"I like you, too."

"Oh," Haruka says, almost dumbly. And they stare at each other, taking in the shades of red colouring their faces, fingers tangled and palms pressed tightly—and Haruka wonders if everything would shatter if he dares so much as to breathe.

Then Yazaki giggles. Once. And then she breaks into an uncontrollable laughing fits, tiny chuckles muffled into the red scarf snugly circling her neck.

Something in Haruka's chest loosens, and slowly, slowly, the corners of his lips curve up.

**——————-**

He follows her to the platform, where the next train towards Tottori Station where she would take the shinkansen is arriving—loud clanking noises drowning the announcement overhead. She glances at him with a shy, tiny smile, and says, "Well, I'll be going."

He nods, follows the line of her figure as she adjusts her jacket. "Have a safe trip."

The bright sunflower smile that greets him sends something in his chest aflutter. "You should head back to the dorm quickly, too, Nanase-kun. You're drenched."

"Oh," no wonder there has been an underlying sense of cold sticking onto him for a while, now. "It was raining."

Yazaki giggles. "It still is," she points out, before pulling off the snug muffler that circles her neck and shoulders like a protective blanket, and tiptoes to drape it over Haruka's shoulders, the edges of the muffler flapping in the chilly late autumn breeze. It's warm, and Yazaki is standing close—so close Haruka doesn't dare breathe. "Please don't catch a cold."

His heart stutters in his chest, his mind short-circuits, and Haruka blurts out, "When you come back, can I kiss you?"

He mentally kicks himself for that. But Yazaki's fingers in the muffler tightens and her shoulders shake with restrained laughter, and Haruka catches the smell of oranges that he's grown to like as well through letters he still keeps under his desk. 

The shade of red across Yazaki's face darkens, but she's grinning.

"Maybe. If you're really good."

And then cold lips press against the Haruka's cheek for a split second, a fleeting warmth quickly taken away by the biting night wind, but burrows deep anyway into his chest. And Yazaki is laughing, still like sunshine under the dim lighting of the stations, stepping back and letting go of her own muffler, now snug under Haruka's chin, a meager protection from the wind.

"I'll see you when I get back, Nanase-kun."

The train door slides close before Yazaki's sunflower smile, and the train takes her away.

Haruka waves goodbye and stays there even after the last trail of the train is gone. He breathes—feeling lighter than he's ever been, dazed, and perhaps just a little bit stupid, heart still racing and face still hot. Only when the biting cold begins nipping the skin under Yazaki's red muffler does he move, looking up at the dark sky and the pitter-patter rain, and thinks,  _home._

He'd probably have to go home and thank his friends now.

Perhaps he'd cook a banquet with all their favourite foods. And let Nagisa head-nuzzle him daily, or listen to whatever theory Rei starts babbling about next time he gets into another book. Or maybe stop being an asshole to Sousuke, and actually verbalise that Rin's ideas sometimes probably works. He should definitely hug Makoto—he does that all the time and Makoto's always great, but he deserves hugs and kitties more than ever now.

Fuck Mikoshiba-buchou though. 

**——————-**

When he gets back under his balcony, shivering and feeling like the tips of his fingers are going to fall off any time, Haruka looks up to see Makoto, Rin, and Sousuke throws him a rope made of at least three bedsheets over the balcony railings. Their faces are made of curiosity and worry, and Haruka buries a smile into Yazaki's muffler.

"Climb up, Haru!" Rin hisses at him, throwing anxious glances around, obviously worried that they'd be caught by the school's security. "Come on, quick, you have a lot to tell us!"

Haruka isn't sure he could climb a bedsheet rope in normal circumstances, much less now when he's absolutely drenched and shaking and freezing. There's no other choice to make it back to the dorm, though, so he reaches out and grasps the bedsheet, fingers tangling tight, and tries to pull himself upright.

He slides right back down. Up above, Rin groans.

"Haru, are you okay?" Makoto's voice comes drifting, softer then the wind, sounding worried. "I think we should just pull him up."

Good idea. Haruka knows there is a reason Makoto is his bestfriend, and not Sousuke, who just leans down and says, "Oi, Haru, climb up."

"I am not a monkey." Haruka tells him, just as Rin makes an exaggerated excited gasp, eyes wide as he shoves Sousuke to the side, leaning down as far as he could, voice high-pitched and barely more than a hysterical whisper as he points at Haruka: " _Is that her muffler?!_ "

"What?!" Sousuke and Makoto choruses, forgetting completely that they need to keep his voice down, and Haruka could hear other voices drifting out from his room— _how many people are in his room, anyway_? —and Rin is barking at both Sousuke and Makoto to pull up the bedsheet and him with it, because he needs details now, this is what his hard work all year has culminated to, and he is not waiting a minute longer or god helps him  _now fucking pull!_

Between Sousuke's "I can't believe he got her muffler" and Makoto's "But Rin, we work on this together!", Haruka lets himself laugh very, very softly.

**——————-**

Years and years down the road, when Haruka had finally married Aki and opens a small, cozy bakery and cafe fifteen minutes by foot from home, there are times when he opens photo albums of their high school days that Makoto keeps and smiles at the memories of being teenagers.

The mufflers they exchanged for their first Christmas together are still in the closet, folded neatly and surrounded by the scent of oranges. Aki still has the star-patch Haruka's sewn to give her at their first date framed on top of her dresser, next to their wedding picture. They all still drop by the Iwasame Boys High School Festival every year, catching up despite living close to one another, and Haruka still hears people yelling at each other, "You can do it like Nanase-senpai did!" or "Be strong like Nanase-senpai!" or "Make like Nanase-senpai!" even if these kids have no idea who  _Nanase-senpai_  is, and he is never sure whether he should laugh or be embarrassed about that.

(In a notable year where the festival extends to the boys dorm, one of the kids had actually greets him by saying, "Welcome to Iwasame Boys Dorm! Have you ever heard of our Nanase Legend?")

Aki's sunflower smile stays the same, bright and sweet, whimsical at times but always warm. Haruka still comes home to a locked door and a bedsheet rope hanging from their balcony, with Aki leaning down from the railings and grinning down at him—maybe he shouldn't have told her the part with the bedsheets after all—and let it not be said that Haruka doesn't do anything for love, because he's spent the better half of his marriage years learning how to climb bedsheet ropes properly because Aki always fails when she tries to hoist him up with the bedsheet rope.

(Police were involved, at first. Later, they learnt that it's "A Nanase thing," as Officer Matsuoka and Officer Yamazaki puts it, "Just ask any Iwasame High kid," and never bothered to check on the Nanase family house when a bedsheet rope hangs outside the balcony anymore.)

There will be a time when age catches up with all of them, when their children have had children and the tiny braids curving along Aki's cheeks are streaked with white strands, where Rin and Haruka both sit in their rocking chairs on the porch watching Makoto and Aki coo over Sousuke's grandchild's baby, and Rin says, "You know, my grandnephew just pulled a Nanase in college."

Haruka makes a face. "Rin."

Rin flashes him a sharp grin. "He made like Nanase pretty well."

Haruka pokes him in the ribs with his cane.

**——————-**

**Special Edition of Iwasame Dorm Slang Dictionary, Fifth Print Edition, included in the new students' briefing package.**

Page 50.

_Pulled a Nanase: to have confessed in a grand manner. (see p.78: the Nanase Legend)_

_Make like Nanase: in progress of confessing in a grand manner. (see p.78: the Nanase Legend)_

**——————-END——————-**

  
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